The Three-Fifths Compromise

Explain how delegates argued about counting enslaved people, who still had no rights or votes, and left slavery in place.

Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.

What children learn in Level 30

Another fight went to the heart of the country's promise. About 700,000 people in the United States were enslaved, most of them in the South.
House seats depend on how many people live in a state. Southern delegates wanted enslaved people counted, to win more seats, even though those people had no vote and no rights.
Many Northern delegates objected. Why should the South get extra power from people it denied all freedom?
The deal counted three of every five enslaved people. It was a bargain about power between free men. It didn't help the enslaved at all, and it gave the South more seats for decades.
Georgia and South Carolina said they wouldn't join without slavery, and the delegates gave in. Slavery stayed, and the slave trade could go on until at least 1808. Some delegates knew it was wrong. It took a terrible war to end it.

Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:

SS4H2.b — Evaluate the major issues debated at the Constitutional Convention: the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, the rights of states to govern themselves (federal system), the Great Compromise, and slavery (Three-Fifths Compromise).