How Did The Articles Of Confederation Create Compromises

Soon after the Articles of Confederation had gone into action, the leaders realized that it may not have been the best plan if they wanted to become a successful country. They began to form a new constitution with multiple changes; however, they first had to create compromises so that both the small as well as large states would be pleased with their new system. These compromises include the Great Compromise, the Three-Fifths Compromise, and the compromise over commerce, all leading to a stronger country. With the Articles of Confederation, each state, no matter what size, got one vote when making important decisions. The delegates from large states were opposed to this idea and felt that they should have more votes since they had a larger population. If the votes were relative to the population, then the people in the larger states would have more say than if there is only one vote per state. The delegates from smaller states liked having one vote because they believed they were
Southern states had a plethora of slaves while the northern states had little to none. Virginia was one of the southern states and they fully insisted on having them count towards the total population because at the time their slave population reached almost 300,000. Massachusetts a northern state was on the complete other end with zero slaves total due to their anti-slave policy so they felt it would be incredibly unfair to count slaves towards total population. To balance out both the states that had excess amounts of slaves, and no slaves at all, the Three-Fifths Compromise was formed. This compromise stated that only three-fifths of a state's slave population would be taken into consider for the total state population. Although this seems like a small compromise it still helped in allowing the delegates to quickly get the new Constitution