Full Question:
In debates leading up to the Three-Fifths Compromise, southern states argued that:
A. slaves should be counted among a state’s population for the purpose of deciding the state’s number of congressional representatives.
B. the federal government should not have the power to take away an individual's freedom or property.
C. slavery should be made legal in every state, including states that would be added in the future.
D. states with large populations would be better served by a bicameral, or two-house, Congress.
A. slaves should be counted among a state’s population for the purpose of deciding the state’s number of congressional representatives.
Explanation:
The number of Congressional representatives will influence the number of votes that a state can have when voting for the type of bills passed by the federal government.
This means that the more representatives a state had in the government, The easier it is for that State to pass the legislatures that will be beneficial for that state.
At the time, the number of Congressional representatives from each state was influenced by the number of citizens population that the state had. This became a problem for Southern States. At that time, Slaves made up around 18% of the population in southern states.
This is why the southern states argued that the slaves should be counted as citizens population.
The northern states did not agree with this., So both of them were having a debate over it. IN the end, they created the Three-fifths Compromise. Meaning that the northern states agreed that southern states could count the slaves as citizens population. But one slave is only counted as 3/5 of non-slave citizens.
