The Pros And Cons Of The Great Compromise

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The main reason why the Framers didn’t succeed in their final compromise is because it was too difficult to make all the delegates (who were basically competing) agree with each other, so numerous issues were ignored and most plans were severely compromised. An example of this is the debate between larger and smaller states over their representation in the newly proposed Senate. Two solutions were significantly favored: the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan. The smaller states were in favor of the New Jersey Plan, which would enforce each state to send the same number of representatives to Congress. The larger states supported the Virginia Plan, which called for each state to have a different number of representatives based on the state’s population. Eventually, an agreement between the states was made known as the Great Compromise. The Great Compromise combined the New …show more content…

Free states got an advantage as well when it was enforced that slaves would also be counted as three-fifths of a person for tax purposes. This has infamously become known as the 3/5 compromise. However, the issue of slavery was never solved in the Great Compromise. Free states knew that the Southern states wouldn’t accept the Constitution if it took away their rights to own slaves. Because of this, the only ruling in the Constitution that dealt with slavery was the Fugitive Clause which enforced Free states to help recapture runaway slaves who had escaped their masters' states. However, that only further benefited Slave states. Slavery was disputed again when Northern states wanted the government to have complete power over trade with the other nations. Southern states depended heavily on trade and feared that the North would get enough votes to interfere with their slave and agricultural