Three Fifths Compromise Analysis

During the writing of the Constitution, there were a lot of disagreements on a lot of major issues. It was mainly between the north and the south, with their population sizes and on how the government should be ran. Those issues would affect how the President is elected, weather congress should elect, or the American people should elect. Also how the states would each be represented, by the population and if slaves counted towards the population. There was also the compromise on the trading of slaves, which was a big issue for the south. These are not the only compromises for the constitution, and all of them were major enough to have to been discussed at the convention, these are just some of the few that were part of the bigger picture we …show more content…
The southern states wanted slaves to count as population, since about 30% of slaves made up the population in the south. The north was afraid though that the south would gain more in Congress by importing more slaves. There was the Virginia plan originally that was proposed by Edmund Randolph, this was supported more by large populations and eventually the Three Fifths Compromise was proposed as a resolution to the Virginia Plan. With the Three Fifths Compromise three out of every 5 slaves would count for representation and tax purposes. This though had nothing to do with actual slavery laws, this compromise was actually done to bring the south and north together to finish the Constitution. Later on though the Fugitive Slave Law was added, and forbid new slaves in the new states, but also stated that if slaves were to runaway that they would be returned. Some historians believe though that without this compromise our country could have gone in a different direction, separating the north and the south who would form their own countries and maybe even sparing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. This did though eventually lead to the civil war and was one of the major contributors in starting the war to end slavery. Before the end though they still had to discuss the ins and outs of the slave trade, and if slaves were property and allowed to be taxed. This resulted in the Slave Trade