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The Virginia Plan

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This United States Constitution was really the second constitution the United States ever had. The first one being The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. It was created by the Second Continental Congress beginning in 1776, all 13 states had ratified it near the beginning of 1781. America fresh off independence from Britain wanted to greatly limit the powers of government and make sure it never became anything similar to Britain’s rule. Because of this the Articles of Confederation gave the government very limited power. As the years went by Congress and other political powers began to realize the system of government was not capable of making this nation the way they wanted it to be. No one took their currency seriously and the government lacked the power to enforce much of anything. The main problem of the Articles of Confederation according to George Washington was “no money.” States never paid all of their taxes and sometimes …show more content…

This convention's purpose was to revise the constitution and make the federal constitution satisfactory for the needs of a successful government. Two plans for structuring the government arose at the beginning of the convention. The Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan was proposed by Virginian delegates for a bicameral legislative branch. James Madison worked on bettering the document while he waited for the Constitutional convention of 1787. The Virginia Plan set forth the idea of population-weighted representation in the proposed national legislature. One of the big debates to get passed was how to value a state's legislative power. In the articles of confederation each state had one vote in a unicameral legislature. This seemed to be unfair because some states had much larger populations yet had the same

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The Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan had many similarities and distinct differences. The New Jersey Plan wanted the Legislative Branch to consist of one house with equal representation from all states. It also stated that the Legislative Branch could collect taxes from the states. The Virginia Plan included details about a powerful Legislative Branch. There would be two houses with membership proportional to the state’s population.

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Final Exam Part I: QA2 The Virginia Plan a New Constitution The Virginia Plan proposed a new Constitution designed as a republic and a strong national government. The most distinguished feature of the plan created structural changes as well as delegated sovereignty to the Federal government and the people. This transfer of power diminished the role of the States in the national government. The Virginia Plan structurally replaced the unicameral Congress by separating federal power among three branches of government, a bicameral legislature, an executive and a judiciary.

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The Virginia Plan was a plan drafted by James Madison and was presented by Edmund Randolf. It was presented to the Constitutional Convention on May 29, 1787. According to the plan, a strong central government had three branches: legislative, judicial, and executive. The plan also proposed two houses: the first one had members elected by the people for three-year terms; the second one had older leaders elected by the state legislatures for seven-year terms. The role of the plan was important for “setting the stage for the convention.”

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Virginia and New Jersey are plans presented at constitutional convention. They give information about the structure of the government, representation of the congress, powers given to the congress and the composition of the government branches. There are several similarities between plans presented at constitutional convection by Virginia and the New Jersey plans. On the other hand there are differences between the two plans as illustrated below.

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Student’s name Professor’s name Course number Date The Virginia and New Jersey plans 1 The Virginia plan had various characteristics as proposed by Mr Randolph. He suggested in accordance to the wishes of the committee that the national government should be created and that it should consist of a supreme legislative, Executive and Judiciary. According to Mr. Patterson in the Virginia plan which he drew from Mr. Randolph’s propositions, proposed that revision of the articles of confederations was paramount in order to render federal constitution adequacy to the demands of both government and the union in preservation.

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The New Jersey plan was another plan that was presented at the Constitutional Convention. The New Jersey Plan was presented by William Patterson on June 15, 1787. This plan was presented because the small states felt that the large states would control the government and they didn’t want that. One component of the plan was that there would be three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative branch would be unicameral and only have a one house congress.

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Daron Kozian Professor Hamman POLS 001 03/13/2017 Constitutional Convention The Virginia plan was written by James Madison on May 29, 1787. The Virginia plan proposed a strong central government. The government consisted of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The Virginia plan favored the large states. The congress would make decisions according to state population votes.

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How the Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan Effected Representation The idea of equal representation has been debated many times throughout the history of mankind. But equal representation is often not feasible without compromise which is exactly what happened in Philadelphia in the year 1787. The representation that was being questioned was how the small and large states could both be represented equally, and it is not shocked that both the small and large states had a plan of how the representation should work. “The one plan was federal, the other national,” (105)

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The Virginia Plan proposed getting rid of the articles all together which would give congress the power to legislate with a two house legislature and would be votes would be based off the population of the state. The New Jersey plan on the other hand wanted to tweak the articles, wanted only a one house legislature, and only allowed each state one vote. Between the two, a compromise was made known simply as the Great Compromise. The issue of representation was solved because a two house legislature was decided upon, the senate would represent the states and the house of representative would be responsible for representing the people equally. Now that the government

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Virginia Plan was created by James Madison but presented to the Constitutional Convention by Edmund Randolph, Governor of Virginia in the year of 1787. The Virginia Plan was about a new form of government and called for the number of votes each state would receive would be based on the population instead of each state receiving just one vote. James Madison and other 56 delegates met in Philadelphia in May 1787, they wanted to make amendments in the Articles of Confederation. They were successful and managed to create a new constitution and as James Madison was representing Virginia, he had become the chief recorder of information. Virginia Plan served as that basis for debate in the development of the U.S. Constitution.

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The Virginia Plan, created by James Madison, proposed that the Articles of Confederation to be “scrapped” or thrown out, and that the people would make a new National Government which has the power to make laws binding upon the states, to raise its own money through taxes, and to regulate trade throughout the states. The mayor, Edmund Randolph, introduced this plan. It was wildly popular throughout the states and was put into effect. It was significant in creating our new government simply because it got rid of the Articles of Confederation. It made it possible for the federal government to not only gain money from tax from the states, but it also impacted the creation of our new government.

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The establishment of the federal government as it is known to the modern American, began with a call to ratify the Articles of Confederation and then evolved into the Continental Congress and the creation of a the new Constitution. Initially, two plans were proposed for the creation and development of the federal government. One plan, known as the New Jersey Plan, proposed by William Paterson and also referred to as the Small States Plan, sought to deviate slightly from the Articles of Confederation by giving equal representation to each state in the legislature, regardless of population or size (U-S-History, n.d.). This plan amended, rather than replaced, the Articles of Confederation and it strengthened the federal government while still

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Instead of a simple majority vote to pass laws, 9/13 states had to agree to pass a law. Rhode Island had as much voting

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Representation was a very important part that happened in the Articles Of Confederation. Delegates debated on the Virginia and New Jersey plan. The Virginia plan wanted to give more power to the bigger states, 3 branches of government, and 2 houses. The New Jersey plan wanted each state to have one vote regarding the population. They also wanted equal representation.

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After deciding to write a new constitution, the delegates could not decide what new form the government should take. One of the options was the Virginia Plan created by Edmund Randolph and James Madison. The plan included a strong government with three branches (the legislative branch, The judicial branch, and the executive branch). In the Virginia Plan, the legislator would consist of two houses and seats would be awarded on the basis of the population. Due to the fact that the seats are awarded based on population, larger states would have more representatives than smaller states.

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