The Great Compromise & The Three-Fifths Compromise: Fifth Grade Social Studies
The creation of the United States Constitution required delegates at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention to resolve explosive disagreements through historic, pragmatic, and morally complex compromises that fundamentally shaped the nation.
The representation Crisis: Roger Sherman and the Great Compromise
By July 1787, the Constitutional Convention was on the brink of total collapse. The large states, led by Virginia and Pennsylvania, steadfastly insisted that representation in Congress must reflect population. The small states, led by New Jersey and Delaware, refused to participate in any national government where they did not hold equal voting power. The sweltering heat, combined with weeks of bitter, unyielding debate, pushed delegates to the edge of walking out.
At this perilous moment, Roger Sherman, a seasoned, pragmatic statesman from Connecticut who had signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, stepped forward with a brilliant solution known as the Connecticut Compromise, or the Great Compromise.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE GREAT COMPROMISE |
| |
| BICAMERAL LEGISLATURE (CONGRESS) |
| |
| HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES SENATE |
| (The Lower House) (The Upper House) |
| |
| - Representation based on - EQUAL representation: |
| POPULATION TWO senators per state |
| - Directly elected by the - Chosen by state |
| people legislatures (originally)|
| - Favored LARGE states - Favored SMALL states |
| - All tax bills must - Advises & consents on |
| originate here treaties and appointments|
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
The Structure of the Bicameral Congress
Sherman's proposal bridged the divide between the Virginia and New Jersey plans by designing a bicameral (two-house) Congress that incorporated elements of both proportional and equal representation:
The House of Representatives would serve as the lower house, with representation based on population. The more people a state had, the more representatives it would send to the House. Representatives would be elected directly by the eligible voters of each state every two years, making them directly accountable to the citizens. To satisfy the principle that representation must be tied to taxation, all bills for raising revenue or taxes were required to originate in the House.
The Senate would serve as the upper house, with representation based on complete state equality. Every state, regardless of whether it had millions of residents or a few thousand, would receive exactly two senators. Senators would serve six-year staggered terms, providing institutional stability, wisdom, and continuity. Under the original Constitution, senators were chosen by state legislatures rather than direct popular vote (a procedure that remained in place until the 17th Amendment in 1913).
For any bill to become a federal law, it had to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate in identical form, ensuring that legislation could neither be forced through by populous states against the wishes of small states, nor dictated by small states without the approval of the majority of the American people. On July 16, 1787, the convention narrowly passed the Great Compromise by a single vote, saving the convention from disaster.
The Bitter Debate Over Slavery and Representation
While the Great Compromise resolved the structural standoff between large and small states, it immediately ignited an even more dangerous and deeply moral controversy between the Northern states and the Southern states regarding how enslaved human beings should be counted.
Slavery was an established institution across parts of the United States, but it was central to the plantation agriculture economy of the Southern states—especially Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In contrast, Northern states like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut had relatively few enslaved people and were already enacting laws to gradually abolish slavery within their borders.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE CONTROVERSY OVER COUNTING ENSLAVED PEOPLE |
| |
| SOUTHERN STATES DEMAND: NORTHERN STATES COUNTER: |
| - Count enslaved people for - "Enslaved people are denied |
| REPRESENTATION in Congress all human rights & treated |
| - Do NOT count them for direct as property by state law." |
| TAXATION - "If they are property, why |
| - Goal: Maximize Southern should they count for votes |
| political power in House any more than horses or |
| cattle in the North?" |
| - If counted for House seats, |
| they must be counted for |
| federal direct taxes! |
| |
| THE THREE-FIFTHS COMPROMISE |
| Five enslaved persons counted as THREE free persons for |
| BOTH representation in the House AND direct taxes |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
Southern Demands vs. Northern Objections
Southern delegates demanded that enslaved persons be counted fully when calculating a state's population for seats in the House of Representatives. Counting millions of enslaved laborers would dramatically inflate the South's political power in the national government, allowing Southern states to control Congress and protect slavery from federal interference. Yet, hypocritically, Southern delegates argued that enslaved people should not be counted when the federal government levied direct taxes on states based on population.
Northern delegates erupted in vehement opposition. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania delivered a scorching rebuke, declaring that slavery was a "nefarious institution" and "the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed." Morris challenged the Southern delegates: "Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens and let them vote. Are they property? Why then is no other property included? The houses in this city, the horses and cattle of every man in this state and every other state ought to be included in the representation!"
The Three-Fifths Compromise
To prevent the Southern states from walking out and destroying the Union, the delegates negotiated the Three-Fifths Compromise. Under this agreement, three-fifths of the total number of enslaved individuals living in a state would be counted for both representation in the House of Representatives and the assessment of direct federal taxes. In practical mathematical terms, every five enslaved individuals were counted as three free persons.
The Three-Fifths Compromise had enormous and tragic historical consequences. It handed the Southern slaveholder class a massive artificial boost in congressional seats and electoral votes for the presidency. For the next seventy years, this disproportionate political power allowed Southern presidents, speakers of the House, and Supreme Court justices to dominate national politics and aggressively protect the expansion of human chattel bondage.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Fugitive Slave Clauses
The debate over slavery produced two additional painful compromises at the convention. Deep South states, particularly South Carolina and Georgia, threatened to reject the Constitution outright if Congress was granted the power to interfere with the importation of enslaved Africans.
To keep the Deep South within the convention, the delegates agreed to the Slave Trade Clause (Article I, Section 9). This clause prohibited Congress from passing any law banning the international importation of enslaved people for twenty years, until January 1, 1808. In exchange, Southern delegates agreed to allow the federal government to regulate interstate and international commerce by a simple majority vote rather than a two-thirds supermajority. On the very first day permitted by the Constitution—January 1, 1808—President Thomas Jefferson signed a federal law abolishing the foreign slave trade into the United States.
Finally, Southern delegates secured the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2), which required that any enslaved person who escaped to a free state must be returned to their enslaver upon claim. This clause legally prevented free states from granting freedom to escaped enslaved people within their own borders, nationalizing the reach of slavery.
While many delegates abhorred slavery, they prioritized building a unified constitutional nation above all else, leaving the fundamental moral contradiction of human bondage to fester until it eventually tore the nation apart in the Civil War.
Chapter Review and Exercises
Summary Review Exercises
Exercise One asks students to explain how Roger Sherman's Great Compromise successfully reconciled the competing interests of large states and small states. The response should describe the creation of a bicameral Congress consisting of the House of Representatives, where representation was proportional to population to satisfy large states, and the Senate, where every state received exactly two senators to satisfy small states, requiring legislation to pass both chambers.
Exercise Two asks students to analyze the arguments raised by Northern and Southern delegates regarding how enslaved persons should be counted for representation and taxation. The response should explain that Southern delegates wished to count enslaved people to inflate their legislative power while excluding them from taxation, whereas Northern delegates protested that treating human beings as property under law while counting them for political representation was unjust and hypocritical.
Exercise Three requires students to describe the long-term political impact of the Three-Fifths Compromise on American governance between 1789 and the Civil War. The response should explain how counting three-fifths of enslaved people granted Southern states bonus seats in Congress and extra electoral votes in presidential elections, enabling slaveholding politicians to exert immense control over national policy and judicial appointments for decades.
Detailed Solutions
Solution to Exercise One clarifies that the Great Compromise combined democratic representation of citizens with the sovereign protection of states. By balancing the population-driven House of Representatives with the state-equal Senate, the Constitution created a dual system where neither group could monopolize federal policymaking.
Solution to Exercise Two reveals that the dispute was fundamentally about political power. Northern delegates pointed out that Southern laws denied enslaved people all civil rights and classified them legally as property, so counting them as persons to grant Southern enslavers more votes in Congress was an intolerable contradiction.
Solution to Exercise Three details that the Three-Fifths Compromise tipped the national balance of power heavily toward the South. It enabled Southern slaveholding elites to win twelve of the first sixteen presidential elections, maintain control over the speakership of the House, and secure a pro-slavery majority on the Supreme Court, profoundly delaying national action against slavery.