Why is three fifths compromise important

In the part about the international slave trade, they said migration of such persons. Now they say three fifths of all other persons. In fact, the word slavery never appears in the original constitution.

So, why do they say three fifths of all other persons or migration of such persons as states think it proper to admit? And honestly, I think the answer to this is that the framers were ashamed of slavery. They were ashamed that this institution existed in a democratic society.

They knew that the eyes of the world, the eyes of history, would look at this document and this institution completely sullied the idea of a democratic government. So, as it says here, their agreement was that for every five enslaved people who lived in a state, three of them would be counted for the purposes of population. This is a huge victory for slaveholders, getting more power in Congress for having people who can't vote, who can't be citizens.

Why did the delegates of other states allow this to happen? And I think the simple answer is that the constitution would not have been ratified were it not for this compromise, among others. The states of the south were too important to getting that nine out of 13 necessary votes to replace the articles of confederation with this new constitution.

So, they made a compromise to make sure that the constitution was ratified and improved. But that compromise would have tremendous consequences for the generations of enslaved people who would live under that system. Leslie M. Harris, Emory University. Sanford Levinson, law professor. Raymond T. Diamond, Louisiana State University law school. Please upgrade your browser. Congress, which took office in It is ironic that it was a liberal northern delegate, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise, as a way to gain southern support for a new framework of government.

Southern states had wanted representation apportioned by population; after the Virginia Plan was rejected, the Three-Fifths Compromise seemed to guarantee that the South would be strongly represented in the House of Representatives and would have disproportionate power in electing Presidents. Over the long term, the Three-Fifths Compromise did not work as the South anticipated. Since the northern states grew more rapidly than the South, by , southern representation in the House had fallen to 42 percent.

Nevertheless, from Jefferson's election as President in to the s, the three-fifths rule would help to elect slaveholding Presidents. Southern political power increasingly depended on the Senate, the President, and the admission of new slaveholding states. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the founders of the United States were in the process of forming a union.

Delegates agreed that the representation each state received in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College would be based on population, but the issue of slavery was a sticking point between the South and the North. It benefitted Southern states to include enslaved people in their population counts, as that calculation would give them more seats in the House of Representatives and thus more political power.

Delegates from Northern states, however, objected on the grounds that enslaved people could not vote, own property, or take advantage of the privileges that White men enjoyed.

None of the lawmakers called for the end of slavery, but some of the representatives did express their discomfort with it. Ultimately, the delegates who objected to enslavement as an institution ignored their moral qualms in favor of unifying the states, thus leading to the creation of the three-fifths compromise. First introduced by James Wilson and Roger Sherman on June 11, , the three-fifths compromise counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. The text of the compromise, found in Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution , states:.

The compromise acknowledged that slavery was a reality, but did not meaningfully address the evils of the institution. By characterizing them as fugitives, this clause criminalized the enslaved individuals who ran away in quest of their freedom. The three-fifths compromise had a major impact on U. It allowed pro-slavery states to have a disproportionate influence on the presidency, the Supreme Court, and other positions of power.

It also resulted in the country having a roughly equal number of states that opposed and favored enslavement. Some historians contend that major events in U. The enslavement of Black people may have been kept in check rather than allowed to spread without it, and fewer Indigenous peoples may have had their way of life upended, to tragic results, by removal policies. The three-fifths compromise allowed the states to unite, but the price was harmful government policies that continued to reverberate for generations.