In July of 1766,why was there such a heavy debate in the Continental congree about the issue of slavery?

Answer 1

Thomas Jefferson wanted to end slavery and tried to do it, but he was unsuccessful. The Northern economy was not based on slave labor so most Northerners didn’t require slaves. The economy in the Southern States was mostly agriculture based and that requires a lot of manpower so they HAD to have a cheap labor force; slaves. Even today agriculture is manpower intensive and has to be cheap, which is why migrant laborers are so important to our economy and needed.

The Northern States had a larger population than that in the Southern States. This made the Southern States angry because their population determines the number of Representatives a state has in Congress. A state's population also determines how many votes a state casts in the Electoral College. So this was a strong issue and the South felt that the North could take over the new country. A compromise was finally made, each slave would count as 3/5's of a person; this made things more balanced while not outlawing slavery or making slaves equal to citizens. )Wikiepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_compromise)

The South needed slaves for their agricultural based economy. It takes a lot of people to harvest crops, and that is still true today. Since agriculture takes a large land area the south had a smaller population, that's why the allowance for slaves was so important.

In the North the economy was based on shopkeepers and traders, which is what gave England such a strong economy. Since shops don't take up much room and work best in a compact group most of the Northern States had a large population areas; cites, thus the North had a higher population.

Getting the states to cooperate was difficult, they were jealous of their independence and didn’t want a Federal Government that could take that freedom away from them. The first American Constitution was the Articles of Confederation, which gave the states the most power, it didn’t work very well though. The Later Federal Constitution was designed to still give the states more power than the Federal Government and included the 5/8’s compromise on slaves. One great hampering force to that the Federal Government was its inability to charge income taxes; this kept it small and weak. Over the years the Federal Government gained power. An amendment was passed that gave the Federal Government the right to charge income taxes (the 16th amendment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution). This started a trend where increasingly stronger Presidents made the Federal Government more important than the State Governments.

The Constitutional Convention was almost torn apart over the issue of slaves and population. The final compromise of counting each slave s 3/5's of a person saved the Constitution and allowed the United States to form. This compromise was needed to keep the Southern states in the union.

Answer 2

I think it had to do with taxation and representation (in Congress and the House). I think the debate ended with the 3/5 compromise, where each slaves counted for 3/5 of a person. History can be terrible.

Answer 3

There was no Continental Congress in 1766. Your facts are wrong.

Answer 4

There was an issue about how to represent citizens. And if slaves were people that should be represented. They decoded on the 3/5 compromise, which counted 3.5 of the slave population as people.

Answer 5

Marney of the men in congress were slave owners

Answer 6

because some didnt want to end slavery and want to end slavery