Little light is gained as to the position occupied by the slave in the social mind from the discussions and debates of the constitutional convention of 1787, although slavery is tacitly recognized in the clauses on representation and taxation, the extension of the slave-trade, and the regulation of fugitive slaves. In connection with the basis of representation and taxation the question arose whether the slave was a person or a chattel, but it was debated not with the view of bringing out what the consensus of opinion of the nation at large was but rather with a view to the political exigencies of the situation. The individual States had never been inclined nor did they now propose to surrender to the Union the right to determine the status of persons within their limits so that the debates were begun with the general concession of the fact that slavery existed in some of the States, that it would in all probability continue to exist, and that the future of the institution was primarily a problem that belonged to the individual States where it was found. The problem facing the members of the convention was, therefore, to provide a system of representation that would ensure political equality to all sections and at the same time safeguard the peculiar conditions and social and economic institutions of each State. To base representation entirely upon the number of the free population would give an undue preponderance to the free States, while to base it upon all, both slave and free, would give an undue advantage to the five slave States. Hence the rather queer compromise that representation "shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, _three fifths of all other persons_"--"all other persons" being a euphemism for "slaves," a term which does not occur in the document. By this measure the slave was made to be only three fifths of a full social unit, or three fifths of a man. This would seem to imply that in the social consciousness of the nation at large the slave was part chattel and part person and this doubtless was the fact. Certainly this is not the last instance where a tendency has manifested itself to assign to the Negro a sort of intermediary status between a chattel and a full social unit. The question came up in 1829 in the Virginia constitutional convention in the struggle between the slaveholding eastern and the free western section of that State.[162] Doubtless one reason for the refusal of Congress to reduce the representation of the Southern States, after the legislation of a few years ago, that practically disfranchised the Negro in the far South, has been an unwillingness thus to lend national sanction to the inferior political as well as social status to which this legislation has at least for the time being reduced the Negro.