They were trying to decide on how many representatives each state should have. There was a conflict between the north and the south debating whether slaves should be counted as people. The south wanted to gain more representatives based on population by using the sleeves as people. Eventually the north and the south came to a resolution that every five slaves would count as one person.
The primary purpose of the Constitutional Convention was to forge a political union, not a moral one. Many of the delegates at Philadelphia were hostile to the very notion of slavery. ... A number of delegates from the South concurred. On a moral level, slavery was virtually indefensible despite numerous.
