The ⅗ Compromise was a solution to a conflict between the United States northern and southern states in 1787. The conflict was whether or not enslaved people would be counted as representing a whole person when it came to representation in the Electoral College and the House of Representatives in Congress. It was decided that each slave would represent ⅗ of the value of a free person. The impact of this compromise was that it temporarily solved a problem that could have kept our country from moving forward as a new nation. The ⅗ Compromise allowed our country to ratify the US Constitution in 1790 but also pointed out the great flaw of slavery in our nation and opened our eyes to the reality of slavery and how the slaves weren’t treated like ⅗ of a person at all.
In 1783 the Continental Congress first brought up the idea of how slaves should be
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The Civil War started April 12, 1861 and lasted till May 13, 1865 and after the war the thirteenth amendment was made. The ⅗ clause was repealed when the thirteenth amendment was enacted after the war because it outlawed slavery. Yet after the Civil War the southern states got more representation,”Ironically, the South, after initiating and carrying on a civil war for four years, would substantially increase its strength in the House of Representatives” (Levy, 2692). When the Civil War ended in 1865, it allowed the country to come together to outlaw slavery with the thirteenth amendment making the ⅗ clause obsolete and rendering it useless because the thirteenth amendment outlawed slavery. It took a long time before slavery was abolished completely because even though many people did believe that slavery was bad some other people who believed very deeply in slavery and still believed that enslaved people were only property and should not be allowed to be represented as a free person or be free at