The Northern Compromise

The Revolutionary War began because the colonist felt that the British were mistreating them. Because of events like the stamp act of 1765(a tax on some paper goods), the Townshend act of 1767(a tax which was on a variety of goods but only ended up being tea), and the Boston Massacre, the colonist felt they were mistreated and wanted freedom. Unfortunately, the freedom they were fighting for and would get after 8 years of fighting, would predominantly apply to white American men.

White women certainly had more rights than people who were African American and Native American, but still nowhere near the same amount as men. When women and African Americans saw the colonist fighting for independence, it gave them hope that it might be a change in the way they were treated to. Not everyone was for slavery and in fact most northerners were against it.

While writing the Declaration of Independence congress took out a few lines saying, “he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither”.

This was taken out because not everyone agreed on it but who it was, was never discovered. As Jason Ripper puts it in his book “American Stories: Living American History” “who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it”.

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Slavery was unfortunately extremely profitable, and congress just couldn’t leave these states out because without them it would make it even more difficult than it already was to defeat the British. The northern states would not be victories in slowing down the slavery in southern states. Out of the original 13 states the slave states were Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, a total of 8, The Free states which slavery still might have existed, but laws were reducing it, included Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, a total of 5. These two viewpoints on slavery were completely different, while northern states wanted to slow down slavery and take it out, Southern states wanted to keep slavery laws just how they were. These differences made it difficult for congress.

One examples of this is when Southern states wanted their slaves to be counted as people while sending representatives to congress, the more people a state has, the more representatives they got to send. This was very important to slave states as Georgia had more slaves than free population. After some haggling, both sides agreed that each Slave was worth 3/5 of a person benefiting slave states and owners. As Jason Ripper says, “The three-fifths compromise became a short-term way to keep the North and the South together in one nation”. The Northern states’ compromise was not meant to last forever and because of this tension would rise between the North and South and would eventually result into the revolutionary war.