Framers 3/5 Compromise

Since the Framers began writing the Constitution in 1787 to govern our great nation, Americans had been avoiding an ugly truth. Slavery had been in American since the colonization of Jamestown in 1619 because indentured servants had become too expensive to bring over from England to do their work. The colonists’ only option for survival was to bring slaves over to help with the hard labor no one else wanted to do or could do. When the slaves came, they gave the colonists a chance at living. They helped with the tobacco crop and rice. Since the Revolutionary war in 1783 however, many colonists in the north believed that slavery was not as important as it used to be. In the northern states they did not need the slaves as much anymore. The slaves in the north did not …show more content…
While most of the elite owned some slaves, they did not agree with it. They could not see slavery being abolished because of how much it helped the economy. To keep the nation untied, they introduced compromises and acts to be passed by congress. The first of these being the 3/5 Compromise. The Framers had a perfect opportunity to end slavery while writing a new document to govern the people and states but they choose to avoid it. In some ways they had no choice but to avoid it because they felt like compromises on slavery were the price for the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. In the Constitution they included the 3/5 compromise. In this compromise it said that every slave in each state would be counted as 3/5 of a person when counting the population. This was important for the southern states because they did not have as many free people as the north did. So if they were to have this compromise, they could compete in terms of numbers. After the compromise the south felt like they could support this new document because to them that was a fair trade for a stronger central