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Examples Of The Three Fifths Compromise

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The issue of slavery was a significant “thorn in the side” of America from the very inception of our nation. Despite the fact that slavery was an accepted legal phenomenon in the eighteenth century, it also invoked significant controversy. Many Americans, typically those denizens of the southern states, felt that slavery was an indispensable economic necessity. Alternatively, others opined that slavery was an inherently immoral and unethical institution which denied certain races basic human rights, and as such warranted abolition, no matter the consequences. Although the Constitution never mentions the word “slave” once, slavery is referenced to in the Constitution several times, in three prominent compromises that our founding fathers were forced to make, for the sake of the establishment of a unified nation. These compromises had a lasting impact on future generations, both legally and emotionally.
When the colonists decided it was …show more content…

As a result, a compromise was agreed upon. Three fifths, or sixty percent, of a state's slave population would be represented in Congress. This came to be known as the “Three-Fifths Compromise”.
A second issue raised during the writing of the Constitution, was whether the government should given the power to regulate slave trade. Many delegates from the Northern states considered slavery evil and denounced it as a repugnant institution. The South on the other hand, argued that slavery was an economic reality and necessity. As Charles Cotesworth Pinckney so aptly put it,
“While there remained one acre of swamp-land uncleared of South Carolina, I would raise my voice against restricting the importation of negroes. I am . . . thoroughly convinced . . . that the nature of our climate, and the flat, swampy situation of our country, obliges us to cultivate our lands with negroes, and that without them South Carolina would soon be a desert

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As mentioned in the module, "Lecture Notes for Chapter 2 The Constitution", the Three-Fifths Compromise or "the three-fifths rule", was put into motion as a way to appease Northern delegates while also preventing the Southern delegates from leaving the convention. The compromise ultimately states, "The three-fifths meant that the House of Representatives and the electoral college would be apportioned in part of the basis of property--specifically, property in slaves" (Bardes, Shelley, Schmidt 42-43). In other words, this referred to slaves in that each one would be counted as three fifths of a person, which benefited slave owners the most as that meant they would have more people from the South when it came to determining the representation in Congress. which is how the interests of Southern states were addressed.

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Leslie Chihuahua United States History to 1877 11/13/2015 11:00-11:50 AM Missouri Compromise was an agreement from the House of Representatives to reach a median to keep slavery out of Missouri after all the tribulations it had caused before it became a state. Henry Clay, Speaker of the House made important decisions in order for Missouri to be admitted as a state that could impact American history. In 1819, slavery was a resourceful profit to slave owners and this sparked a sectional controversy in the country over the efforts to expand slavery into the new western territories. The country had 22 states, eleven free eleven slave, and the line between them were distinguished by the northern and western boundaries of Pennsylvania and the Ohio River. (Txt.

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The three-fifths compromise was a system to determine state representation in Congress by counting each enslaved person as three-fifths of a person. Proposed in 1787 by James Wilson and Roger Sherman, it clearly showed the strength of the proslavery forces during the time of the United States Constitutional Convention. Since the Virginia Plan was rejected, the three-fifths compromise was enacted as a new framework for the government. The Southern states demanded more representation politically because their population was vastly increased due to slavery. The Northerners viewed one free man as one vote and one slave not counting as part of the population while the Southerners viewed one free man as one vote as well as one slave as one vote.

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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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1157 Words | 5 Pages

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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Slavery, the “peculiar institution” of the United States, has been a heated subject for many years. Even though slavery remained in some parts of the world, opposition to it grew. The leading argument was that slavery was immoral and that it violated the constitution. Three main reasons for opposition to slavery were social issues, the press, and political views.

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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 New Jersey Plan was in favor of small states and wanted a unicameral legislature and all states to have equal representation. The Connecticut Compromise, also known as The Great Compromise, or Sherman’s Compromise, was reach during the United States Constitutional Convention in 1787,it was an agreement between two earlier proposals which solved the issue it called for a bicameral legislature with the upper chamber, called the Senate, determined by equal representation, and the lower chamber, called the House of Representatives, determined by the population of each state; it combined both interests. The Great Compromise was proposed to address the feelings from the smaller states that their interest would be drawn out by the larger states. However, the Three Fifths Compromise proposed by Judge James Wilson, and Roger Sherman. The Three Fifths Compromise is three out of every five slaves would be counted for taxes and population.

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Known as the “peculiar institution” in the South, slavery was perhaps the most divisive issue America faced during its early days. Rapid westward expansion encouraged by the American idea of manifest destiny highlighted the issues that came with protecting the institution of slavery, resulting in various compromises drawn up by the government in an effort to qualm the intensifying division in the country. Moreover, movements like the Second Great Awakening revitalized America’s moral conscience, revealing the ugly injustice and dehumanization hidden in the institution of slavery. In the decades leading up to the civil war, economic and moral arguments were what fueled the growing opposition to slavery. Analyzing the differences between the

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There were many important Compromises between the years of 1820 and 1860, some that worked completely and some that didn’t. In the early nineteenth century, people were good at compromising and making things work for everyone. How long did perfect compromising actually last? Slavery began to split the nation apart, causing compromising to become hard to do.

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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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America was no longer a society with slaves, but especially in areas of the deep south, had become a slave society. Paternalistic value embedded in the deep south slave society culture was arguably the cherry on the cake of an unattainable compromise. Americans referred to the abolition of slavery as unconstitutional, necessary to life and permanent. This thought is expanded upon by David Wilmot as he argues, “I ask not that slavery be abolished. I demand that this Government preserve the integrity of free territory against the aggressions of slavery against its wrongful usurpations”

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The institution of slavery had been in place in the United States long before the country had even been established. By the time a war erupted over the issue, the practice had been in place for nearly 250 years, was deeply ingrained in the country’s economy and social structure, and had strongly influenced the way different regions had developed. Due to this longevity and deep-rootedness in many aspects of the country, many were unwilling to let it die. Opposition to slavery, nevertheless, developed on the basis of moral and ethical ideals. The accounts of former slaves would help to encourage the push towards abolition, as they exposed the cruelties they had experienced firsthand.

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Slavery in the U.S. Constitution After the Unites States declared Independence from Great Britain in 1776, they greatly feared a strong national government that would be like a monarchy like the one Great Britain had. To prevent this tyrannical government from happening in the U.S., a convention of delegates from all thirteen states were brought together to create the U.S.’s first written constitution: the Articles of Confederation. This convention was called the Continental Congress. The Articles of Confederation focused on having a federal government, or a loose alliance of the states.

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Despite the fact that the Constitution did not employ the term “slavery”, Article IV provided for the return of persons who escaped from their masters “held to service or labor” such as fugitive slaves. After 20 years of the confirmation of the Constitution in 1808, Article I provided the end of the slave trade. Many questions were left non responsed by the Constitution, especially, about the statue of slavery in the new territories obtained by the United States. (ibid) The failure to treat the comprehension and the honesty with slavery in the Constitution guaranteed a conflict over this issue and was particularly one of the leading motivations for war and those reasons were demonstrated in the quotation of the American Civil

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