William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

46 Chapter 2Chapter 2 || The Constitution and the FoundingThe Constitution and the Founding

taking a principled stand. Even after these basic positions had been recognized,

many unresolved issues remained. Could the importation of slaves be restricted in

the future? How would northern states deal with runaway slaves? Most important

in terms of the politics of the issue, how would the slave population be counted

for the purpose of slave states’ representation in Congress? The deals that the

convention delegates cut on the issue of slavery illustrate the two most common

forms of compromise: splitting the difference and logrolling (trading votes).

Splitting the difference is familiar to anyone who has haggled over the price of a car

or bargained for something at a flea market; you end up meeting halfway, or splitting

the difference. Logrolling occurs when politicians trade votes for one another’s pet

projects, for example, support for dairy subsidies in one district in exchange for

opening up more federal lands for mining in another.

The delegates went through similar negotiations over how slaves would be

counted for purposes of states’ congressional representation. The states had been

through this debate once before, when they addressed the issue of taxation under

the Articles of Confederation. At that point, the slave states had argued that slaves

should not be counted because they did not receive the same benefits as citizens

and were not the same burden to the government. Nonslave states had countered

that slaves should be counted the same way as citizens when determining a state’s

fair share of the tax burden. The sides had reached a compromise by agreeing

that each slave would count as three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation.

The arguments over the issue of representation became even more contentious

at the Constitutional Convention, where the positions were reversed, with slave

states arguing that slaves should be counted like everyone else for the purposes

of determining the number of House representatives for each state. Once again,

both sides managed to agree on the Three-Fifths Compromise (see What Do the

Facts Say?).

The other two issues, the importation of slaves and dealing with runaway slaves,

were handled by logrolling combined with an element of splitting the difference.

Logrolling is more likely to occur than splitting the difference when the issue

cannot be neatly divided. For example, northern states either would be obligated

to return runaway slaves to their southern owners or would not; there was no way

to split the difference. On issues like this with no clear middle ground, opposing

sides will look for other issues on which they can trade votes. In this case, the

nonslave states saw an opportunity to push for more national government control

over commerce and trade than was provided under the Articles, a change that the

slave states opposed. A logroll—or vote trade—developed as a way to compromise

the competing regional interests of slavery and regulation of commerce. Northern

states agreed to return runaway slaves (the Fugitive Slave Clause), and southern

states agreed to allow Congress to pass laws regulating commerce and taxing

imports with a simple majority vote (rather than the supermajority required under

the Articles).

The importation of slaves was included as part of this logroll, along with some split-

the-difference negotiating. Northern states wanted to allow future Congresses to ban

the importation of slaves; southern states wanted to allow the importation of slaves

to continue indefinitely, arguing that slavery was essential to produce their labor-

intensive crops. After much negotiation among the states, the final language of the

Article resulting from this part of the logroll prevented a constitutional amendment

from banning the slave trade until 1808.^15

From a modern perspective, it is difficult to understand how the framers could

have taken such a purely political approach to the moral issue of slavery. Many of the

delegates believed slavery was immoral, yet they were willing to negotiate for the

Three-Fifths Compromise

The states’ decision during the

Constitutional Convention to

count each slave as three-fifths of

a person in a state’s population for

the purposes of determining the

number of House members and the

distribution of taxes.

DID YOU KNOW?

At only about

8,700

words, the U.S. Constitution is much

shorter than the average state

constitution (39,604 words).

Source: PARCA, Tableau Public

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