Wilson’s initial hope that America could be “impartial in thought as well as in action” was soon compromised by Germany’s attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Britain was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension arose between the United States and Germany when several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines.
The famous Three-Fifths Compromise famously dealt with the issue of how much slaves would "count" in terms of representation of various states in Congress.
