The Missouri Controversy also concerned political power. Northern whites were not all humanitarians concerned for the welfare of African Americans, but many of them were increasingly alarmed at the disproportionate political influence of southern slaveholders. The North had come to resent the constitutional clause by which three-fifths of the slave population counted for purposes of representation in Congress and the electoral college. The rule helped perpetuate the Virginia dynasty of presidents that reigned for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years under the Constitution; specifically, it
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