Three-fifths compromise

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The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise between Southern and Northern states reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention in which only three-fifths of the population of slaves would be counted for enumeration purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Electoral College (through a census). It was proposed by delegate James Wilson.

The Three-Fifths Compromise is part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Since slaves could not vote, the benefit of counting any portion of the slave population for the purposes of apportionment fell to the slave-holding class. In other words, counting slaves as full persons would have increased the political power of the slave-holding states in the House of Representatives, which would presumably be to the further detriment of the slaves themselves. The Compromise also dealt with the issue of direct tax (as shown above), since slaves were considered property and taxable assets.

Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1865), the three-fifths clause was rendered moot. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution 1868) later superseded Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, which specifically stated that "Representatives shall be apportioned ...counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed".