Constitution that would potentially endanger it. But southern slaveholders were a minority, both in the convention and in America. Overall, the population of the eight northern states roughly matched that of the five southern states. However, since 40 percent of the southern population were enslaved people who had no voting rights and because southern states had more restrictive voting laws, the North had a much larger voting population and would likely prevail in any national election. So representatives of the southern slave states insisted on counter-majoritarian protections, “as close to
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