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The Great Compromise: Constitutional Convention In 1787

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The Great Compromise, also known as the Connecticut compromise, resolved many issues having to do with representation. This agreement was made at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The debate was between large states and small states. The compromise is the number of representatives in the lower house would be decided according to the population of every state; one representative that is elected for every one thousand residents. This was changed to thirty thousand recently before the constitution was signed. Every state would have the same amount of representatives in the upper house (Robertson). This was a simple compromise that was needed because we could not all agree on one set of rules. The Great Compromise is “game changer” that saved …show more content…

Before all this, “The congresses only consisted of one chamber with a certain number of representatives from every states” (Drinan). Congress went from unicameral to bicameral which divided up the congress. The question was about the states having a certain number of representatives. Larger states and states with a higher population supported the Virginia Plan, which was based on the population. The higher population, the more representatives they could have. This is where the disagreement is because, “ Delegates from smaller states supported the New Jersey Plan, under which each state would send the same number of representatives to Congress” (Drinan). The smaller and larger states continued to debate over this and that is why the first compromise was created. Smaller states argued that, “despite their lower populations, their states held an equal legal status to that of the larger states, and that proportional representation would be unfair to them” (Drinan). To accommodate both sides, The Great Compromised did …show more content…

The Great Compromise created a new issue concerning slaves and how they would be counted when figuring out a state’s population (Valentine). The Great Compromise required an exact count of the population to decide how many representatives each state would be allowed to have in the lower house. The Southerners wanted to include the slaves which make up about forty-three percent of their population. Doing that they would have many more representatives compared to the Northern states. Northern states had very few slaves, and they did not want the Southern states to gain the advantage of greater representation in the new government. However, on the issue of tax assessment, the Northern and Southern states reversed their positions on who to count (Baker). This was later solved with the Three-Fifths Compromise. This was all added to the

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