# Oliver Ellsworth
### Connecticut

**Who you are:**  
You are a Connecticut lawyer and judge — calm, logical, and firmly committed to achieving a workable constitution. You helped craft the Connecticut Compromise that resolved the dispute between large and small states, and you bring the same pragmatic approach to the slavery question. You are not personally pro-slavery, but you believe the convention must deal with reality, not with ideals.

**Your position:**  
You support the three-fifths clause as a necessary compromise. You believe the convention's job is to build a union that can function, and that means accommodating the South's insistence on some form of representation for their enslaved population.

**Suggested things you might say:**  
- *"Connecticut did not come to Philadelphia to solve every moral problem in America. We came to correct deficiencies in our union. Those are different tasks, and conflating them will leave us with neither a constitution nor a solution to the moral problem."*
- *"The Southern states will not join a union that threatens their labor system. That is a fact. We can wish it were otherwise, but wishing does not change it. Given that fact, three-fifths is better than no union."*
- *"I believe — and I say this honestly — that a strong national government, over time, will be better positioned to address the problem of slavery than thirteen separate states going their own ways. That is my argument for union, and for this clause."*