The question of representation, however, threatened to destroy the seven-week-old convention. Delegates from major states believed that because their states contributed proportionately more to the nation`s financial and defensive resources, they should be proportionally more represented in the Senate and House of Representatives. Delegates from small States demanded with comparable intensity that all States be equally represented in both chambers. When Sherman proposed the compromise, Benjamin Franklin agreed that all states should have an equal voice in the Senate on all matters except money. Was this the intention of the founding fathers? Edwards is skeptical because, as he points out, the majority of Americans at the time of the Constitutional Congress came from rural areas — not urban areas. “No one thought about protecting rural interests,” Edwards says. “At that time, rural interests dominated.” After six weeks of unrest, North Carolina shifted its vote to equal representation per state, Massachusetts abstained, and a compromise was reached called the “Great Compromise.” In the “Grand Compromise,” each state received the same representation, formerly known as the New Jersey Plan, in one House of Congress and proportional representation, formerly known as the Virginia Plan, in the other. Because it was considered more sensitive to majority voting, the House of Representatives was given the power to pass all laws dealing with the federal budget and revenue/taxes under the origination clause. Perhaps the greatest debate conducted by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 focused on the number of representatives each state should have in the legislative department of the new administration, the U.S.
Congress. As is often the case in government and politics, the resolution of a great debate required a major compromise – in this case, the Great Compromise of 1787. At the beginning of the Constitutional Convention, delegates imagined a congress consisting of a single chamber with a certain number of representatives from each state. On 16 July, the Convention had already set the minimum age for senators at 30 and the term at six years, compared to 25 years for members of the House of Representatives with a two-year term. James Madison explained that these distinctions, based on “the nature of Senate confidence that requires a greater degree of information and greater stability of character,” would allow the Senate to proceed “with more composure, with more system, and with more wisdom than the branch chosen by the people.” The Great Compromise, also known as the Connecticut Compromise, the Grand Compromise of 1787, or the Sherman Compromise, was an agreement between large and small states that partially established the representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution as well as in the legislature. It happened in 1787. The Connecticut compromise is the result of a debate among delegates about how each state could be represented in Congress. The Great Compromise led to the creation of a bicameral congress.
The House of Representatives was also created, which is determined by the population of a state. The agreement retained the bicameral legislature, but the upper house had to be changed to accommodate two senators representing each state. The agreement changed the structure of the U.S. government by striking a balance between populous states and their claims, while taking into account the less populous state and their interests. Therefore, both sides rejected each other`s plans. The disagreements required reflection that led to negotiations on how to determine the future of the U.S. government. Roger Sherman, a delegate from Connecticut, proposed a plan that ultimately turned out to be the Grand Compromise. His plan included a two-part form of government in the United States, the Senate and the House of Representatives. For every 300,000 citizens, a state received one member of the House of Representatives and two senators.
On July 16, 1787, despite Benjamin Franklin`s efforts to block the equal right of small states to vote, the proposal was passed, albeit with one vote. Thus, the name compromise was mentioned, and it paved the way for the final adoption of the Constitution and became an important springboard in the creation and development of the United States. The Connecticut Compromise (also known as the Great Compromise of 1787 or Sherman Compromise) was an agreement reached by the large and small states at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which partially established the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. It retained the bicameral legislature, as proposed by Roger Sherman, as well as proportional representation of states in the lower house or house of representatives, but required that the upper house or Senate be weighted equally between states. Each state would have two representatives in the House of Lords. The Great Compromise of 1787, also known as the Sherman Compromise, was an agreement reached at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 between delegates from large and small states that determined the structure of Congress and the number of representatives each state would have in Congress under the United States Constitution. Under the agreement proposed by Connecticut Delegate Roger Sherman, Congress would be a “bicameral or bicameral body,” with each state receiving one number of representatives in the lower house (the House) in proportion to its population and two representatives in the upper house (the Senate). The disagreement over representation threatened to derail ratification of the U.S. Constitution, with delegates on both sides of the dispute vowing to reject the document if they failed to get what they wanted. The solution took the form of a compromise proposed by Connecticut statesmen Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. The vote on the Connecticut compromise on July 16 made the Senate look like the Confederate Congress. In the previous weeks of debate, James Madison of Virginia, Rufus King of New York and Governor Morris of Pennsylvania vigorously rejected the compromise for this reason.
[7] For nationalists, the Convention`s vote in favour of compromise was a crushing defeat. On July 23, however, they found a way to salvage their vision of an elitist and independent Senate. Just before most of the convention`s work was referred to the Detail Committee, Governor Morris and Rufus King asked state members to vote individually in the Senate instead of voting en bloc, as they had done in the Confederate Congress. Then Oliver Ellsworth, one of the main proponents of the Connecticut compromise, supported their motion, and the Convention reached the permanent compromise. [8] Since the Convention had approved early on the proposal in the Virginia plan that senators have a long term, the restoration of the vision of this plan of individually powerful senators prevented the Senate from becoming a strong protector of federalism. State governments have lost their right of direct scrutiny over congressional decisions to pass national laws. Since personally influential senators received a much longer term than the state legislators who elected them, they essentially became independent. The compromise continued to serve the special interests of the political leaders of the small States, who were guaranteed access to more seats in the Senate than they would otherwise have been able to obtain. [9] In deciding on the question of representation, the debate focused on the slaves that existed in the population of a state and led to the formation of the three-fifths compromise. According to this agreement, each state was to count three-fifths of its slaves among its total population. Prior to this agreement, slave states demanded an increase in their representation in Congress by counting all slaves as part of the community. On the other hand, opponents argued that since slaves were not citizens, they had no rights.
It was not necessary to count them in the context of the population. The most significant effect of the Great Compromise was the change in the structure of the U.S. government. The agreement aimed to identify the interests of large states such as Virginia and New York, as well as smaller states such as New Hampshire and Rhodes Island, and to strike a balance between proportional and general representation. The most visible term obtained as part of the compromise was that each state would divide congressional delegates between; Representatives who would then be elected by district to sit in the House of Commons, and senators to represent individual states in the upper house. The practical effect was the creation of a two-tier system that could meet the needs of the people in the House of Commons, and the House of Lords could represent the interests of the states. .