The Great Compromise, basing representation in Congress in part on population, opened up an ugly question: how to count slaves for the purposes of determining membership in Congress.

In 1787, slavery was still legal almost everywhere in the country. Yet, for the purposes of representation, Northern states did not want their slave population to count as people but Southern states wanted their slaves to count in the official population figures used for determining representation in Congress.

Southern states threatened not to ratify the Constitution if their slaves did not count.

Activity

Examine the following census totals for 1790. Using your notes and a calculator, determine why there was such as a strong disagreement. Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. Click here The Southern states (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) had far more slaves than the Northern states, and slaves were a greater percentage of their overall population. For example, the Southern state with the most slaves, Virginia, had almost 300,000 slaves, fifteen times the number of slaves of the Northern state with the most slaves, New York, which only had 20,000. In South Carolina, the slave population was 43 percent of its total population. By contrast, Delaware’s population had the greatest percentage of slaves in the North, but it was only 15 percent.

Overall, slaves represented one-third of the total Southern population. Without counting the slaves, the South stood to lose a significant portion of its representation in Congress. for a sample answer.

The Three-Fifths Compromise

The above activity demonstrates that Southern states would have lost a third of its population totals without counting slaves. That would have shifted a fair amount of political power to Northern states. The great fear in the South was that once the Constitution was ratified, the Northern states would eventually use that population advantage to abolish slavery.  

The compromise that fixed this disagreement would end up being the most disgraceful and bizarre part of the otherwise magnificent Constitution. Slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of determining representation in Congress. In other words, if a Southern state had 10 slaves, they would be counted as six people.

That is why this is called the Three-Fifths Compromise. As an added protection for the institution of slavery, Congress could not ban the importation of slaves until 1808.

Reflection: Why does the Three-Fifths Compromise seem so terrible today? Answer in your notes.