re: #53 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

The problem was not so much the continuation of slavery where it existed - there were plenty of Northerners who were okay with that - but its expansion into the territories and new states.

The North understandably did not want the 3/5ths rule to be extended into the new territories and states, because it had already given the slaveholding states more representation in the House than they would have gotten otherwise. Allowing the new areas to be slaveholding states would have meant slavery would be a near-permanent fixture in the USA — or at least a longer lasting fixture.