The 3/5 compromise was better for slaves than if they had full representation in the census.

Thank you, Skynet, for hosting this debate. The 3/5 compromise most certainly helped to keep some power away from the South...and yet the south and north would continue to be on relatively equal power against each other from the beginning of the Republic to when the Civil War was concluded. While this meant that northerners had to accept Fugitive Slave laws and expansion for slave-states, it also meant southerners had to accept the same federal tariffs and support free-state expansion. Supposing the southern delegates at Philadelphia pushed through a clause stating that their slaves would be counted as a full person for purposes of house power, the United States would have split sooner...the North seceding from the South. During the War of 1812, many New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut to discuss their grievances with the Democratic-republican federal government, especially over the ongoing war with Britain. Secession was discussed, but it was considered an "extreme proposal." (http://en.wikipedia.org...) How extreme would it have been to secede from a south that was almost guaranteed over half the power? It is very likely that New England, and the Western "free-er" states, would have not wanted to be part of a Union that was run by southern aristocracy. Then there is the case of the Civil War. With secession, the war may well have happened, but with drastically different results. For one thing, the Fugitive Slave act, a law the Union upheld even during the war so long as masters were still loyal to the Union, would not have passed in a Great-Lakes United States or in a New England United States. The act would have had no power north of the Ohio River. If and when the South declared war, they would not have had the parallels to the Revolution on their side that helped to keep neutrals out. England and France both wanted a United States that was not as strong, so they considered briefly supporting the South, but the slave-system was the southern rebels downfall. In this imagining of a country where the states split over slaves being counted fully for the house, however, the South is an agressor without any wiggle-room; foreign governments would have been more wary of the South and want to help their other valuable trade partners stay intact. With many more republics with limited power, african-american slaves could flee to free areas more easily, without being captured and sent home, and all the while the smaller republics would have been hard-pressed to offer something for people to at least stick-with, if not actively encourage migration to (the mid-west, west, and north-east had little trouble doing this even with southern influence in congress). Thus, a full counting of a slave in the census in the 3/5 compromise would have better denotated the people"s right to self-determination while allowing a lower barrier for slaves to escape and a lot more pressure for the South to quit its slaving ways. Instead, we got southern rule of the United States after the war of 1812, which led to fugitive slave laws that made it more difficult for slaves to escape, and Jim Crow laws following the war that swept into the Northern States as well. Indeed, the 3/5 compromise, in attempting to preserve a union that could barely be construed, hurt slaves far more than it helped them.