Over the past few years, U.S. History teacher Mr. Timothy Lengel has been working on and off on a research project.
“It started when Ms. Turlish and I were talking about the 3/5th compromise,” Mr. Lengel said. “We had both noticed that most students did not really understand how impactful it was.”
“I wanted to look at a complete and organized dataset regarding the impacts of the 3/5th Compromise, but could not find one anywhere.”
Mr. Timothy Lengel
The 3/5th Compromise, which was passed during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, established that three out of every five enslaved Black people would be counted when determining a state’s total population. This allowed Southern states to significantly increase their population count due to the large amounts of enslaved black people, while still denying them their basic human rights. Significantly, the state population determines the number of representatives each state has in the House of Representatives, which is responsible for voting on bills in Congress.
The 3/5th Compromise allowed Southern states to greatly inflate their census population, thereby giving them more votes in the House of Representatives. This increase in representation benefited the South in their push to maintain slavery.
“I wanted to look at a complete and organized dataset regarding the impacts of the 3/5th Compromise, but could not find one anywhere,” Mr. Lengel said. “I decided to create it myself.”
Mr. Lengel collected census data for each state from 1790 to 1860 from primary sources and organized it in a Google spreadsheet. This information included the free and enslaved population of each state. From there, he calculated the population gain for Southern states by multiplying the enslaved population by 3/5.
Next, he simulated a scenario of a 0/5th compromise, where black people would not count toward the state population. He recalculated the number of representatives each state would have. As expected, the Southern states lost power. “The future Confederate states gained 5-6% more power in the House of Representatives due to the 3/5th compromise,” Mr. Lengel said.
“A major question among historians is what would’ve happened if it didn’t pass.”
Mr. timothy Lengel
Then, Mr. Lengel applied the recalculated makeup of the House of Representatives to the voting on the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Kansas-Nebraska, which had narrowly passed in the House of Representatives in 1854 by a 113-100 vote, allowed the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery based on popular sovereignty. However, this act violated the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery north of the latitude 36°30´; Kansas and Nebraska were both situated over that line. This act significantly heightened tensions between the North and the South in the 1860s and led to a series of violent conflicts, most notably “Bleeding Kansas.”
In Mr. Lengel’s simulation with the 0/5th compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act narrowly failed in a 106-107 vote due to fewer votes supporting the bill from Southern states.
“The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a major bill that drove tensions between the North and the South and led to the Civil War,” Mr. Lengel said. “A major question among historians is what would’ve happened if it didn’t pass.”
The simulation of a 0/5th compromise wasn’t perfect because no one can know where each vote would’ve fallen, but reasonable assumptions were made based on the political make up of and how polarized the United States was at the time. Southern states lost votes for the Kansas-Nebraska Act as almost all of those states had uniformly voted to pass the bill.
“That’s how all you reevaluate past events, you try to make reasonable assumptions in order to draw a conclusion,” Mr. Lengel said.
Mr. Lengel hopes to find some more time to work on this research project in the future once his newborn child is a little older. “I hope to simulate some other bills with the recalculated makeup of the House of Representatives, such as the Lecompton Constitution,” Mr. Lengel said. “The passing and failing of major bills were significant driving forces leading to the Civil War.”
He hopes to write an essay once his work is finished. “It’s nice to just write things out in an essay,” Mr. Lengel said.
Mr. Lengel encourages students to investigate anything they’re interested in. “All the data is out there. You don’t need super advanced skills to do research,” Mr. Lengel said. “Ask others for help; Mr. Long, Mr. DiBello, and Mr. Leech helped me with the spreadsheet. Just give it a shot and take that first step.”
