There were many issues dealing with slavery that needed to be resolved when the Constitution was being drafted. Since an agreement was eventually reached to have two houses of Congress, with representation in one of those houses determined by the population of a state, the counting of slaves became an issue. Northerners didn’t want the South to have more representatives in Congress and therefore more political power, so they argued that, since slaves had no rights, they shouldn’t be counted at all in determining a state’s population. The South had the opposite opinion and wanted to count all of the slaves. Eventually, a compromise was reached, called the Three-Fifths Compromise, which allowed every five slaves to be counted as three people.

Another issue that needed to be resolved was the issue of trading slaves. Southerners were concerned that Congress would ban the trading of slaves. An agreement was reached that Congress would not ban the trading of slaves for at least twenty years.

Settling these issues helped the Constitution get written and eventually be adopted. Later, some amendments were added to the Constitution that dealt with slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery in the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment stated that all people born in the United States were citizens and had the rights that came with being a citizen. The Fifteenth Amendment made it illegal to deny voting rights based on race, color, or having been a slave in the past.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a positive move toward banning slavery in the United States. The Proclamation made in 1863 was bolstered by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States. However, efforts and progress made by the Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment were watered down by the Jim Crow laws that instituted segregation in the southern United States.

Prior to the constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, the Union was split between states that accepted slavery and those that rejected slavery. The Constitution also made provisions for the continued practice of slavery by stating how slaves would be factored into the determination of representative seats in Congress (Three-Fifths Compromise). The Thirteenth Amendment officially and legally freed all slaves in the Union and also voided the Three-Fifths Compromise, which made it possible for the continuity of slavery.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments sought to address the challenges of segregation and the Black Codes by making their existence and enforcement illegal.