Which of the following issues became an obstacle to the drafting of the United States Constitution? A: whether to count enslaved people in the North as part of the population B:how the votes of enslaved people should be counted when electing representatives C:how to count enslaved people for purposes of state representation D:whether to free enslaved people from plantations in the South

The correct answer is C:how to count enslaved people for purposes of state representation. Southern states had a large number of enslaved people and wanted them to be counted toward their total population so that they would be able to increase their representation in the House of Representatives, which based the number of representatives a state has on its population. At the time, slaves in America were considered property and not citizens. The Northern and Southern states finally came to an agreement on this issue with the three-fifths compromise. This counted slaves as 3/5 of a person, or only counted sixty-percent of slaves towards a state's population when considering how many representatives they would have in the House of Representatives.