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GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 351
saw to be the paramount necessity for keeping the convention together.
All honor to his memory!''
Thus, in the creation of our Federal Senate, we owe to Mr. Baldwin
the principle which preserves the parity of the states. He had fought
for unequal representation in the Lower House and had intimated his
intention to support this principle for the Senate; but to prevent a
threatened rupture of the convention, he changed his intention, divided
the vote of Georgia, and caused the motion for an unequal representa
tion in the Senate to be lost.
2. The Compromise, as to a basis of representation, between the free
and the slave states. One member for each 30,000 inhabitants was the
ratio upon which the convention finally agreed. But the free states were
not willing for slaves to be counted, in reckoning a state's population.
On the other hand, the slave states insisted upon an inclusion of slaves.
Says Mr. Brooks :* "A similar question had arisen during the war.
Money for the army had been raised by requisition on the States in pro
portion to their population. At that time the North had maintained
that the slaves were persons, and that the South's pro rata of money
should be reckoned on the whole population, white and black. The South,
on the other hand, had claimed that slaves were property only and not
persons. It is clear that self-interest colored the views of both sections
at both times. The dispute had been settled by counting a slave as three-
fifths of a person in estimating the population for purposes of taxa
tion; and now, in 1787, this former compromise was adopted, both as
to representation and direct taxation; so that until the Civil War, in
estimating the number of representatives from the South in Congress,
the negroes helped to swell the Southern representation."
Under this apportionment, Georgia was given three members. South
Carolina, with a much larger -population at this time, was allotted five
members. Neither state was satisfied with the manner in which slaves
were to be counted. Each fought to increase its strength in the Lower
House; but without success. Georgia was not entitled even to three mem
bers on a strict application of this rule, but she was allowed this num
ber since her rapid growth in population would justify it before the
Constitution could be put into effect. An effort was made to equalize
power between the North and South; but the North was given a slight
advantage in the number of seats.
3. The Compromise, between State and Federal systems as to gov
ernmental control over commerce, especially in relation to an abolition
of the foreign slave trade. As we have already noted, slaves were not
allowed in Georgia under the rule of her trustees; but when the colony
in 1752 was relinquished to the Crown it became a slave-holding colony
and her support thereafter was given to an institution which she had
formerly condemned. In common with South Carolina, she possessed
at this time important interests in slave property and expected to in
crease her employment of slave labor as her industries expanded and her
population multiplied. To quote the same authority above cited: t "All
the States except South Carolina and Georgia desired to prohibit the
*"History of Georgia," B. P. Brooks, p. 135.
t'' History of Georgia,'' B. P. Brooks, p. 136.