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Compare And Contrast The Three Fifths Compromise

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As leaders of the nascent nation entered the Constitutional Convention of 1787, they aimed to unify the country under a set of common laws and values. During this process, the delegates were divided on the topic of slavery, in terms of how it would affect the way states were represented in Congress and how states were taxed by the national government. After many proposals, the delegates arrived at the three-fifths compromise, which valued slaves as 3/5th of free persons for the purposes of representation and taxation. If a true compromise is an agreement in which the parties involved make equal concessions, then the three-fifths compromise was not a true compromise because it favored the South by giving it disproportionate power in the national …show more content…

To unite the elements of the New Jersey and Virginia Plans, Roger Sherman brought forth the Connecticut Compromise. This agreement re-structured the legislative branch of government, in which the upper house consisted of two delegates per states and the lower house was based on the population of the states. Consequently, the Compromise included the three-fifths clause, which stated that population would be “determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” By partially valuing slaves in both representation and taxation, the clause aimed to placate both the North and the South. The logic behind this solution was promulgated by James Madison’s when he said, “we must deny the fact that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities; being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects, as property.” The three-fifths compromise allowed both sides to benefit, in exchange for some concessions. However, a close examination of the compromise shows that it was not a true …show more content…

While both the slave and non-slave states were represented equally in the upper house, the slave states had greater representation overall in the lower house. This imbalance had long-lasting implications on the composition of the national government, since the South was granted more representation in the Electoral College. Being able to control the fate of the government outweighed the cost of the extra taxation posed by the three-fifths of the slave population. In addition, the North did not directly benefit from this concession from the South because the increased taxes from the slave states went towards the reserves of the federal government, which served to promote welfare in the nation as a

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In the early years, after winning independence from Great Britain, the American colonies set up their government in accordance with their first constitution, the Articles of Confederation. This means that the majority of the power laid in the hands of the states and Congress, “the only institution of national authority” (Brinkley 151) at that time, had very little power. This distribution of authority was the manifestation of the American’s fear of a strong, central government. However, as time passed, more and more people came to agree that the national government was too weak and needed to be strengthened.

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Eventually, the delegates compromised on the slavery issue as well. Slaves were declared to count as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of population counts. However, neither the word slavery nor slave was used in the Constitution. Rather, it refers to the Three-Fifths Compromise as applying to “all other persons. ”Still, it was apparent whom the Three-Fifths Compromise targeted, since it went a step further and addressed the issue of the African slave trade.

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By the mid-nineteenth century, the Constitution had been put into the fiery crucible that was the issue of slavery, littering the antebellum era with political controversy. The national structure framed by the Founding Fathers in 1787, initially intended to bring unity, was now the primary grounds from which the question of slavery was bringing sectional conflict and national disharmony as a result of mass-moral compromise. The Constitution of the United States was instituted to encourage the unification of the stark sectional divide within the nation. However, rather than achieve its purpose, the Constitution was contorted and employed by both sections to further their envisioned future of the country.

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In the beginning of July 11 the delegates had begun arguing over the method of census and who would be counted. Slavery became a spotlight issue in the Great Compromise when the south and north’s different views on how slaves should be counted in representation was made apparent. On one hand, the south wanted slaves to be accounted for when deciding representation. Because the southern states had a large population of slaves they wanted to have more representation in the House of Representatives. However, the north had a different view, they thought that slaves should not be counted as the population for representation.

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The 3/5ths compromise The smaller states wanted more representation in the house but the north argued that if blacks weren 't allowed to vote and didn 't have rights they shouldn 't be counted towards house seats. The compromise stated that every slave counted as 3/5ths of a person towards house

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a) When it came to levying taxes, Congress would count slaves as three fifths of a person when determining population. E. Slavery in the Constitution 1. The slavery clauses in the Constitution were designed upon compromise as to not upset states that were strongly for or against slavery. a) After twenty years, Congress banned the importation of new African slaves on the first day they were allowed to. b)

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The larger states, in favor of the Virginia Plan, were unsure of whether or not slaves were to be counted as part of the population or not. The Southern states wanted slaves to be counted as part of the population, but to also be considered as property, in case the new government was to levy taxes on each state on the basis of population. They also believed that even if slaves were to be counted as people, they still would not be granted citizenship or have the right to vote. Because the majority of the North did not have slaves, the South was in favor of having

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The Three-Fifths Compromise is between the North and the South. The issue they were arguing over is whether a slave should be counted as a part of the state’s population, which determines how many representatives the state can select. The North had a population mostly that was comprise of white man. They believed that slaves shouldn’t be counted as a person since they were not citizens and didn’t have the rights to vote. However, the South disagreed because the majority of their population was slaves.

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Although the Three-Fifths Compromise responded the issue of slavery, there was no words like slavery or slave appear. This settlement was formed during the constitutional convention and in the Great Compromise that concerned the character of representation in Congress. Because the southern states had huge

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The Great Compromise was created soon after which appointed the number of representatives in the House of Representatives according the size of their state. Because smaller states rejected this due to the biased power towards the large states, it was agreed upon that the senate would have the same number of votes regardless of state size. In the southern states, 30 percent of the population consisted of slaves, according to Lowi, Etal (2014). The northern states believed that they should not count towards the population count which would give them more votes in the House of Representatives. Delegates agreed on the Three-Fifths Compromise which would count every five slaves as three people.

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For example, the three-fifths cause of the Constitution had increased their power in Congress and the electoral college to gain control of the polices of the major parties on slavery. As a result, the Slaver Power consolidated their domination through the purchase of Louisiana and Florida without prohibition of slavery and the passages of the Missouri Compromise that allowed slavery to cross the Mississippi River, the annexation of Texas and the compromise measure of 1850. Observing the dominance of the Slave Power, the Republicans were deeply concerned the fact that Slave Power dominated the government and was using it to extend the peculiar institution and impose a new and alien interpretation of the Constitution on the American people. [3] Furthermore, the Slave Power provided the connection between the Republican view of the south as an alien society and their belief to unify as a political organization to confine the southern influence.

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The Northern states, smaller in comparison to the south, already did not have as much representation and political power as the southern states. Therefore, the compromise to them was unnecessary, and they felt they would have all the power and dominate in the polls and decisions. Considering the different views the two already had based on slavery, this alarmed the northern states. However, as time passed, the Three-Fifths Compromise would not provide the advantage the slave owning south had hoped. The Northern states grew more rapidly in terms of population and ended up being opposing political power to others.

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The Constitution, which supposedly protected the freedoms of its constituents, had a stark amount of provisions which protected the institution of slavery in the United States. The first section of the Constitution in discussion is Article 1, Section 2, more commonly known as the Three-Fifths Compromise. This article was used in the determination of representation of the states in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. The high population of slaves in the south often equated to political power

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One of the compromises made in the Constitutional Convention is the three-fifths compromise. In this compromise, the southerners wanted to add slaves to the population of the state they lived in. If slaves were included in their state’s population, that state would be able to add more representatives in the House of Representatives. Northerners did not agree with that statement because slaves did not have the right to vote. After the delegates compromised, they agreed that only three-fifths of the slave’s population would be counted into the state’s population.

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As a part of this amendment, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except in the punishment for a crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. And as written, Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Slavery had been tacitly protected in the original Constitution through clauses such as the Three-Fifths Compromise, in which three-fifths of the slave population was counted for representation in the United States House of Representatives. Prior to the Thirteenth Amendment, more than sixty years had passed since the last amendment to the Constitution had been successfully ratified.

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