What was the Three-Fifths compromise at the Constitutional Convention?
1 Answer
The delegates agreed that slaves would count as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of calculating a state's population.
Explanation:
A lot of debate at the Constitutional Convention centered around the issue of state representation. For the most part, delegates supported ideas in the Constitution that would give a larger proportion of power to their home state.
Many smaller states wanted each state to receive the same number of delegates, whereas larger states wanted the number of delegates to be proportionate to population. On a different side of the debate, southern states wanted slaves to count towards total population, while northern states did not.
For example, a delegate from Massachusetts would likely favor a system that gave out delegates according to population (since Massachusetts was a larger state) but did not count slaves (as Massachusetts alone had outlawed slavery).
Two compromises were used to solve these problems. First, The Great Compromise created two legislative bodies. The Senate would have an equal number per state, while the House would have delegates proportioned by population. The Three-Fifths compromise allowed for each slave to be counted as 3/5 of a person for the House and Electoral College.
While many of the delegates did not believe in slavery, almost all delegates were divided on this issue by their state, rather than by moral beliefs. The result was that Southern States, who at times had more slaves than free persons, found themselves with a larger influence on the House and Electoral College until the Civil War.
