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The South and Voting on the Three-Fifths Compromise

Research Assistants' Commentary (1787 Constitutional Convention)

Cite as: Grace Mallon, ‘The South and Voting on the Three-Fifths Compromise’ in Research Assistants' Commentary (1787 Constitutional Convention), Quill Project at Pembroke College (Oxford, 2016), item 20.

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Research Assistants' Commentary (1787 Constitutional Convention)

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The South and Voting on the Three-Fifths Compromise

Commentary

It is worthy of comment that in this vote, "for considering blacks as equal to whites in the apportionment of representation", some of the most powerful slave states, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, voted against, upholding the compromise. Delaware's relationship to slavery (it votes "ay" here), remaining a slave state despite a general tendency to phasing out slavery up to the Civil War era, might also be worth further consideration.