The Pennsylvania Compromise

The Three-Fifths Compromise of the Constitution was an agreement between Southern and Northern states in which three-fifths of the population of slaves would be counted for representation purposes for the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representatives. Those who opposed slavery generally wished to count only the free inhabitants of each state. Those who supported slavery wanted to count slaves in their actual numbers. The so-called compromise of counting "all other persons" as only three-fifths was for the benefit of Southern power

The Great Compromise of 1787 or the Connecticut Compromise of 1787 refers to the settlement of the dispute that rose due to conflicting views put forward by the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey plan. These plans proposed changes in the Articles of Confederation that was the aim of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. However, whereas the Virginia Plan seemed to provide a greater representation of the more populous states in the national government, the New Jersey Plan was proposed by the smaller states aimed at preventing the balance of the US government from tilting in favor of the more populous states as per the Virginia Plan.

The main point was that slaves should be counted as three-fifths. The argument was northern and southern states the reasons slavery issue. Because the Southern holds their states as a slave state and adding slave as property on the other way the northern states did not want people as a slave. It was the most controversial issue southern was the large populations the reason won the point because of the percentage. Another main point was the economy totally depended on slavery because cheap labor, but northers was popular in trading like rice, tobacco stuff. They eliminate the fight two states made three-Fifths Compromise. In 1783 the article proposed tax should be a portion of the population, then, had a problem again slaver issue not paying tax equally. It was a great solution to add on three fifths as a

The problem of each state’s number of seats in the House of Representatives became a major issue when the Constitution was being drafted in 1787. The population of slaves would be counted as three-fifths in total when apportioning Representatives, as well as Presidential electors and taxes. The Three-Fifths Compromise was proposed by James Wilson and Roger Sherman, who were both delegates for the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Initially, taxes were levied not in accordance to the population numbers, but the actual value of the land. This would provide the slaveholders to have many more seats in the House of Representatives and much more representation within the Electoral College. It was James Madison that would suggest the Three-Fifths Compromise to be made .

There are a number of compromises that can be found in the U.S constitution, all having had a major role in shaping what we all know today as the United States of America. With so many important compromises it is hard to chose just one. That being said, the compromise which I intend to discuss is the three-fifths compromise. This compromise is important in our history and is a pretty controversial matter.Three-fifths compromise was important for both the northern and southern states. The main question that was brought up for this subject was if slaves should be counted in census to determine the number of congressional delegates a state should recieve.

During that time, slavery was an issue in the United States. The Southern states wanted their population, including their slave population to be counted toward their representation in the House of Representatives, the reason for this was because the higher the population, the more representatives they would receive; on the other hand, the Southern States did not want their slave population counted toward their taxes, this was because, the higher the population, the more taxes the south would have to pay; the Northern States disagreed with the Southern States on both matters, there were fewer slave states in the north so the sum of the slaves and the ordinary people would not help the northern states earn representation. Secondly, the northern states felt that if the southern states were allowed to count slaves as part of their population for representation, they should also be counted for taxation. The solution for this confusion was the Three-Fifths Compromise, which each slave would count as three-fifths of a person for both representation and taxation

The North feared that the South could then pass pro-slavery laws against their objections, and defeat any further laws restricting the spread of slavery. This roadblock led to the compromise of 1820. The compromise said that free and slave states had to be admitted in pairs to retain equality in the Senate, and that no further slave states would be permitted north of 36°30´. Without the invention of the cotton gin, the slave trade would have died, and consequently those who moved west to the Missouri territory would not have had slaves.

This may have balanced the slave to non-slave state count in the union but it also basically flat out divided the nation based on slavery. Instead of solving the problem it was a temporarily solution that eventually lead to struggles between the North and the South over the introduction of future western states into the union on the issue of slavery. The passing of this compromise was solely due to the people in Congress, and the president and had nothing to do with the Constitution what so ever.

The Solution was that congress was not allowed to mess around with slavery for a certain amount of time after the constitution was made. The 3/5's Compromise is said to have started the conflict between the North and the South. This divided the nation because the North had little slave’s due to the factories, but the South had more slaves than they did salve owners due to the plentiful of plantations. The North didn't want slaves to be counted because counting slaves would give the South an advantage to having more representative in the lower house since it is counted by population. The 3/5's Compromise called for exactly 3/5th of the slaves in a state to be counted when determining the number of the congress delegates a state would obtain.

This set of 6 proposed Constitutional amendments was one of the last congressional attempts to preserve the union without resorting to a full blown war with the South. This proposal was ineffective because Congress found that the proposed amendments, one of which would have made slave ownership a Constitutional right in the South, conceded too much to Southern extremists and thus it was never passed. This compromise also would have extended the slave demarcation line, splitting the United States in two sections and exacerbating the extent to which their were two divisive political parties; one for Northern rights and one for Southern rights. By the time the Crittenden Compromise was proposed slavery was no longer an issue which only pertained to the maintenance of a political balance of power but it had also become a moral issue. This made Northern voters much less likely to support a compromise that did not directly place a limit on slavery, much less one that made it a Constitutional Amendment. With Northern voters beginning to vehemently stand up for their beliefs against slavery and state authority and Southern voters still refusing to back down from theirs, the ineffectiveness of past compromises was

The Three- Fifths Compromise, mentioned in document 5, established the way in which slaves would be counted toward representation in the House of Representatives. Every five slaves would be counted as three people “including those bound to service for a term of years…three fifths of all persons”. The Great Compromise, showed in document 6, was the final agreement for a way to govern the United States. This Compromise agreed with the Virginia Plan and made the legislative branch bicameral “Created a Congress that is made up of two branches”. The two branches are the Senate and The House of Representatives. According to Document 5 the representation in the House of Representatives is composed of members chosen by the people of the several states for two years, the representation in the Senate is determined by two senators from each state. The chosen people for the Senate have a six year term. (Doc 5 & 6). Furthermore, based on the graph from document 4, it shows that the states Delaware and Rhode Island will support the new Congress due based on equal representation because of the population, they are able to evenly distribute the power. The states Massachusetts and Virginia would seem to support new Congress based on population because of the massive population it contains. Instead of everyone, it would be a group of

In 1819, the nation created a balance Senate with eleven free states and eleven slave states. In the other words, the free states and slave states have equal representation in Senate, but the balance eventually destroyed when the Missouri Territory wanted to enter the United States as a slave state. The Northern states opposed Missouri to enter the United States as a slave state while the Southern states favored it. They, later on, created the Missouri Compromise that Maine enters as a free state, Missouri enters as a slave state, and any territory/state north of the 36°30′ latitude line would be free territory/state and below it would be slave territory/state. President Thomas Jefferson viewed this compromise as being temporary because as the nation moves west (manifest destiny), slavery would increase. The United States expand from just the west of Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean and to Mexico when America fought in the Mexican-American War. America won but the Massachusetts House of Representation believed that the war would lead to the expansion of slavery or slave states (Doc.#4). Mexico gave up California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, part of Colorado, and part of Mexico, but California’s admission created conflict. It created an unbalance

The compromise included the Thomas Amendment, which prohibited slavery north of the 36 degree and 30 minute parallel, indicating the Northern aversion to the practice. Jefferson saw the compromise as the death bell of the Union and a greater divide to the North and South as it outlined clear moral distinctions between the two regions (Doc 4). The population was more dense in the North compared to the South so they needed to employ the three fifth's compromise, that included part of the slave population when it came to determining the representation in the House, to try and protect the southern interests (Doc 3). The South were holding on to slavery while the North were actively trying to decrease its presence, demonstrating a sectionalist

They felt that the three-fifths compromise allowed for a misrepresentation within the government. Another more negatively perceived argument against the three-fifths compromise was through the use of Northern racism which said that southern African Americans were held as equals to Northern whites. Previously, while under a Federalist administration, the North did not feel the need for the three-fifths compromise to be abolished; however, as soon as the Federalist representation decreased in the government, New England cease to benefit anymore especially in their commerce. Closely tied to the three-fifths compromise was the fact that more slave states were being added to the Union which also lessened New England’s representation (Mason, 2002). With all these injustices, as perceived by New England's Federalist, they had come to a breaking point and was pushed to form a conference to try and solve these

There were many disagreements and compromises that occurred while in the process of creating the Constitution. Some were: the debate over slavery, the debate of the Virginia plan and the New Jersey plan, and the disagreement about the amount of time the president should work. There was a huge debate over slavery and the states were torn between abolishing slavery and owning slaves. A three-fifths clause was created so that slaves would be considered part of the state’s population. Three-fifths of the slave population was a compromise where some of the slaves would be counted “in determining each state’s representation in the House of Representatives and its