When talking about the constitution in today’s world I don’t think anyone would disagree about the constitution being an anti-slavery document. The 13th amendment abolishes slavery and any form of service that isn’t voluntary. But at the time of the writing of the constitution I think there would be a strong argument for why the constitution was a pro-slavery document. The north and the south had different views on slavery, but they also agreed on some things. When talking about the slaves they had a big role in the constitution. When talking about representation both the north and the south had views on what they wanted from slaves. The smaller states and slave states wanted slaves to be represented and counted in population. While the larger states and free states didn’t think that slaves should be counted as population because they were a form of property, but they wanted slaves to be counted so they could be taxed. The smaller states wanted equal representation and north wanted to be represented by population. With the argument they came to with the great compromise, which would please small states by …show more content…
Many argued that slaves were no more than property just as animals or land so they shouldn’t be considered as any form of population. Slaves states would argue that they would not join the union if the slaves weren’t considered part of population. With this they came to the agreement of the 3/5 compromise. This compromise allowed slaves to be counted in the population, so for every five slaves they were counted as three freemen. This would also allow taxation on slaves. This pleases slave states and allowed larger states to gain higher populations. So the north and the south would meet in the middle when deciding what slaves represented in the
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.
Therefore, slaves are to be counted as three fifths vote for representation, because slaves made up a large portion of the population in the southern states. Therefore, the south wanted the slaves to count as part of the population so that they would have more power in the house of representatives. The north did not want the slaves to count as part of the population because they did not want the north to have
It imposed a tax, including tariffs on imports. In this Compromise, smaller States had benefited because did not depend on the slave, but large States was not happy with it. The Northern States were interested in both taxes on imports as well as exports, but the Southern did not want taxes and they wanted to keep their power. It was all about the power restriction of trade, import and export from foreign
P.6 Compromises seemed to be working in 1820 as a solution to political issues that America agreed to disagreed on. As seen in the Missouri Compromise, where Henry Clay made slaves free in twelve states and not free in the other twelve; in order to keep everything balanced. But between the period of 1820 to 1860, compromising took a shift and no longer seemed to be the solution. Compromises worked with Henry Clay in the Missouri compromise in 1820 but by 1860 due to a series of geographic, political, and social changes compromises were impossible.
After completing the process of the Constitutional Convention, I have learned an exceptional amount of information that can be used to take on the real world. During the convention there were many factors that impacted how the convention was run, and what choices were made. The preliminary discussion topics, the lessons learned, and the factions represented in the convention all modified the ending result. Each of the preliminary discussions with other factions prior to the convention were very important to the final decisions made. Slavery, a very important topic during the convention, was one such example that branched out into other different issues including slave trade and the abolishment of slavery.
During the Constitutional Convention, delegates were considering how to distribute representation for each state, consequently, the question regarding whether slaves should be counted towards the population arose. Southern states feared that not counting slaves as a part of their populations would give them less representatives in Congress, thus allowing larger Northern states, like Massachusetts, Virginia, and Pennsylvania to overwhelm, and out vote the South in issues regarding slave trade. Likewise, the North did not want to surrender their population advantage in Congress either. The compromise they reached was set forth in Article 1, Section 2 of the United States constitution. The compromise they reached arbitrarily counted every five slaves as three individuals.
The South’s goal was to gain more votes in the House of Representatives; they wanted slaves to be counted as part of the population to gain more electoral votes. This was all in effort for slave-owning states to gain more representation in the national government. Furthermore, if slaves became considered part of the population, there would be more of a demand for slaves. On the other hand, the northern states wanted slaves to be considered as “property” (B, “Why was the 3/5 Compromise Important?”).
Then northern states wanted slaves in the southern states to be counted so that they the government could raise taxes there. However, the southern staes didn't want them to be counted because obviously, they didn't want to have to pay more taxes and they also didn't want slaves to be counted to the population because they didn't want it to decide on the amount of representatives represent the state because slave were treated as property, not people, at that time. Somehow, oddly, another compromise was made; for every five slaves, was three counted people. This decided on how many representatives a state can have and how much tax was put on the state as well. This compromise was called the “Three Fifths Compromise.”
The American constitution is the result of compromise because it was designed to last. America’s constitution is the oldest written in the world where the system of government in the United States has always been a success giving all citizens a complete satisfaction with its context (Argosy University 2012). The United States Constitution was adopted in 1787, taking effect in 1789. It is still in force and is the oldest constitution in the world. The Constitution replaced the weak articles of the Confederation to form a union strong enough to survive the dangers of the world and simultaneously protect the freedom of the United States and citizens.
This adds to the Southern population thus giving them more representation. Although this gives the South more representation, it also means these slaves would be counted for tax purposes. These compromises helped resolve arguments going on which helped our new nation develop. The Great Compromise gave us a structure to follow that America still uses today. Today, there are four hundred and thirty-five representatives in the House of Representatives.
Ultimately, the U.S. Constitution was pro-slavery because there wasn 't anything in it that was overly anti-slavery; slavery was being supported. I think that it makes sense to have the Constitution be pro-slavery because the country was left in a chaotic state after the Articles of Confederation failed and it needed to become united fast. To quickly unite the country, the Constitution needed everyone’s support and help, which couldn 't have been received without slavery. The large slave states wouldn 't have ratified the Constitution if slavery was going to be abolished
The result of this was that slave states would have more representation (“The Three-Fifth Compromise”). The reason for this number, was due to the theory that slaves could provide 3/5 the wealth of someone who wasn’t a slave (Morone and Kersh
The northern states individually had started to ban slavery, this concerned the south and it became a topic of discussion for the commerce compromise. In the end the north and south agreed on having no ban on the slave trade for the next twenty years. This allowed the south satisfaction with their businesses and the way they ran their farming at the time and also had benefits to the government, such as the ability to tax the imported slaves. This did not really affect the north because 95% of the slaves in the country were in the south. This also gave the south twenty years to figure out what they would do when they slave trade was going to most likely be stopped in 1808.
In the creating of the US Constitution, the creators hit many roadblocks. It was difficult for the state delegates to decide on much, especially because they were biased and in favor of their own states. The New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan were two examples of the disagreement of representation within the states in the legislative branch. The New Jersey Plan was in favor of equal representation throughout the states. The Virginia Plan was in favor of population representation, meaning the larger states would have more representation than the smaller states.
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.