Farther South, however, especially in South Carolina where the negroes seemed to be the only kind of laborers for the rice-fields, and in those regions where they harvested the cotton, the whites insisted that slavery should be maintained.

The contest seemed likely to be very fierce between the disputants, and then, with true Anglo-Saxon instinct, they sought for a compromise.

The South had regarded slaves as chattels.

The compromise brought forward by Madison consisted in agreeing that five slaves should count in population as three.

By this curious device a negro was equivalent to three fifths of a white man.