The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was instrumental in unifying the states after the Revolutionary War. However, to do this, the Convention had to compromise on many issues instead of addressing them with due haste. This meant that the convention left many questions unresolved. In particular there were the issues of slavery, race, secession, and states' rights. Through the Civil War and Reconstruction, these problems were resolved, and in the process the powers of the federal government were greatly expanded. Slavery There was no significant desire among most of the delegates to abolish slavery during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Furthermore, the focus of the convention was on the formation of a more perfect union, not on the issue of slavery (Dolbeare, 71) . Complicating matters was also the concern of some delegates that giving too much weight to the issue of slavery could cause the unification process to fail. This led to the Constitution containing a series of compromises regarding slavery, clearly avoiding the issue of slavery. These compromises are found in four main points of the Constitution. The first is the Three-Fifths Compromise, which detailed how slaves would influence each state's population for the purpose of determining representation and taxation. Located in Article 1, paragraph 2 of the Constitution, the compromise states that three-fifths of the slave population would be counted for census purposes (Dolbeare, 71). This compromise was important for Southern states, whose populations consisted of large numbers of slaves, because without it they would have had significantly fewer representatives in the House. Article 1, paragraph 9 of the Constitution prohibits... middle of paper......Hofstadter, Richard. The American political tradition and the men who made it. Knopf, New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Print.Jennings, Marianne M. Business: Its Legal, Ethical, and Global Environment. Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print.Lincoln, Abraham. The Emancipation Proclamation. United States National Archives and Records Administration. Network. 05 December 2009. historians/USSC_CR_0074_0700_ZO.html>. Robinson, Luther E. Abraham Lincoln as a man of letters. Philadelphia, PA: R. West, 1977. Print. Scott v Sandford. Center of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1856. Web. 04 December 2009..Texas v. White. Cornell University Law School Supreme Court Collection, 1850. Web. 03 December 2009.USSC_CR_0074_0700_ZO.html>.