The Three-Fifths Compromise was an agreement reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. It was a compromise between delegates from the Northern and Southern states to resolve the issue of including slaves in a states total population for various purposes, including representation in the House of Representatives and taxation. The compromise determined that three out of every five slaves would be counted when determining a state's total population for legislative representation and taxation.
The Three-Fifths Compromise had significant implications. Before the Civil War, it gave a disproportionate representation of slave states in the House of Representatives, as they could count a portion of their enslaved population for representation purposes. The compromise also increased the political power of slaveholding states, as it allowed them to have more electoral votes and influence in the federal government. However, the compromise was later superseded by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which explicitly repealed the Three-Fifths Compromise.
