What was the Three-Fifths Compromise?

The Three-Fifths Compromise was an agreement reached at the Constitutional Convention on July 12, 1787 to count three out of every five enslaved persons in a state's population for purposes of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives, presidential electors, and direct federal taxes. The compromise appeared in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, which counted the whole number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, plus three fifths of all other Persons, the last phrase a euphemism for enslaved African-descended people.

The compromise grew out of the Constitution's adoption of population as the basis for House representation and direct taxes. Once the Great Compromise of July 16, 1787 fixed proportional representation in the House, delegates faced the question of how to count enslaved persons in the southern states. Southern delegates from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia wanted enslaved people fully counted, which would have given the South greater power in Congress and the Electoral College. Northern delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York objected that the South could not have it both ways: claiming enslaved people as property when convenient and as persons when convenient.

The three-fifths formula came from a 1783 proposal under the Articles of Confederation, when Congress had attempted to require states to pay direct federal taxes based on population. The same ratio was reused in 1787 because it was familiar and represented a known compromise. James Madison and James Wilson proposed using it in the Constitutional context.

Delegates approved it on July 12, 1787 as part of a package that also included the postponement of any congressional ban on the Atlantic slave trade until 1808 (Article I, Section 9), the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2), and the prohibition on direct taxes except by population (Article I, Section 9). Together these provisions protected slavery and gave southern states inflated power in Congress and presidential elections for the next 76 years. In the 1790 census, the southern states gained extra seats based on their roughly 700,000 enslaved people; this increased to extra electoral votes that helped Thomas Jefferson defeat John Adams in 1800 and gave the South dominant influence in early national politics.

The Three-Fifths Compromise was repealed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment ratified on July 9, 1868, which apportioned representation by counting the whole number of persons in each state. The Thirteenth Amendment ratified on December 6, 1865 had already ended slavery itself.