between the North and South that three Southern states, Georgia and the two Carolinas, refused to join the Union if slavery were not to be allowed. Delegates opposed to slavery were forced to yield in their demands that slavery be outlawed within the new nation. However, they continued to argue that the Constitution should prohibit the states from participating in the international slave trade, including in the importation of new slaves from Africa and the export of slaves to other countries. The Convention postponed making a final decision on the international slave trade until late in the deliberations because of the contentious nature of the issue. During the convention's late July recess, the Committee of Detail had inserted language that would prohibit the federal government from attempting to ban international slave trading and from imposing taxes on the purchase or sale of slaves. The convention could not agree on these provisions when the subject came up again in late August, so they referred the matter to an eleven-member committee for further discussion. This committee helped work out a compromise: Congress would have the power to ban the international slave trade, but not for another twenty years (that is, not until 1808). In exchange for this concession, the federal government's power to regulate foreign commerce would be strengthened by provisions that allowed for taxation of slave trades in the international market and that reduced the requirement for passage of navigation acts from two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress to simple majorities. Three-Fifths Compromise Another contentious slavery-related question was whether slaves would be counted as part of the population in determining representation of the states in the Congress or would instead be considered property and thus would not be included. The original Virginia Plan contemplated a proportional representation based on the number of free inhabitants. However, the Committee of the Whole modified this in June to include three-fifths of "other persons", a euphemism for slaves. While this benefited states with large slave population in terms of representation, delegates from these states argued that slaves should be considered property and not as persons if the new government would be levying taxes on the basis of population. Despite the conflict, the Three-Fifths Compromise would be adopted by the convention as part of the Connecticut Compromise. Framers of the Constitution Fifty-five delegates attended sessions of the Constitutional Convention, all of whom are considered the