Most Antebellum Period presidents were not only from the South, but also owned slaves themselves. Many figured prominently in maintaining the economics of slavery. One reason for so many Southern presidents is that they benefited from the electoral college advantage they held, especially those from the largest slaveholding state, Virginia. In the Constitutional Convention (1787) delegates from Northern states did not want slaves counted as each being one person for the purposes of a state's representation in Congress. Southern delegates wanted slaves to count as individuals even though they could not vote. The delegates finally arrived at the Three-Fifths Compromise. In Article I, section 2 of the United States Constitution, calling slaves by the euphemism "all other persons", the founders counted each slave as three-fifths of a person. This gave slave states one-third more seats in Congress than they would otherwise have based on the number of citizens they had. This factor was decisive in the 1800 presidential election giving Thomas Jefferson the win by the House of Representatives. 