ouse of
Representatives was to be elected in a body for two years. The President
was elected for four years, at the end of which time he could be
re-elected.

Such were the main lines of the compromises which were effected between
the conflicting views of the extreme Federalists and extreme State Rights
advocates, and the conflicting interests of the larger and smaller States.
But there was another threatened conflict, more formidable and, as the
event proved, more enduring, with which the framers of the Constitution
had to deal. Two different types of civilization had grown up on opposite
sides of the Mason-Dixon line. How far Slavery was the cause and how far
a symptom of this divergence will be discussed more fully in future
chapters. At any rate it was its most conspicuous mark or label. North
and South differed so conspicuously not only in their social organization
but in every habit of life and thought that neither would tamely bear to
be engulfed in a union in which the other was to be predominant. To keep
an even balance between them was long the principal effort of American
statesmanship. That effort began in the Convention which framed the
Constitution. It did not cease till the very eve of the Civil War.

The problem with which the Convention had to deal was defined within
certain well-understood limits. No one proposed that Slavery should be
abolished by Federal enactment. It was universally acknowledged that
Slavery within a State, however much of an evil it might be, was an evil
with which State authority alone had a right to deal. On the other hand,
no one proposed to make Slavery a national institution. Indeed, all the
most eminent Southern statesmen of that time, and probably the great
majority of Southerners, regarded it as a reproach, and sincerely hoped
that it would soon disappear. There remained, however, certain definite
subjects of dispute concerning which an agreement had to be reached if
the States were to live in peace in the same household.

First, not perhaps in historic importance, but in the insistence of its
demand for an immediate settlement, was the question of representation.
It had been agreed that in the House of Representatives and in the
Electoral College this should be proportionate to population. The urgent
question at once arose: should free white citizens only be counted, or
should the count include the Negro slaves? When it is remembered that
these latter numbered something