The Virginia Plan, And Connecticut Compromise

A little over a decade after having declared their independence from Great Britain and working together to agree on a rudimentary constitution, the thirteen American colonies found themselves divided on a new issue. Governed by the Articles of Confederation, it soon became evident to all the sovereign states that this doctrine was inadequate, thus the provinces of the east coast convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This was the stage for the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where James Madison, William Paterson, and Roger Sherman all argued three of the most crucial proposals that served as aggregates to the United States Constitution. These proposals were known as The Virginia Plan, The New Jersey Plan, and the resulting Connecticut Compromise. Although the convention was originally intended to amend parts of the Articles of

Ernst 24). The plan included 15 proposals and traced the outline of what would become the United States Constitution. In addition to the bicameral legislature, the plan also requested that the government be separated into three branches, the executive, legislative, and judicial. Virginia’s plan also would have given…” congressional representation in both chambers of Congress according to each state’s population, which would have given larger states like Virginia greater political representation” (Frantzich, Stephen E.; Howard R. Ernst 24). Under the Articles of Confederation, states at the time shared equal representation regardless of size, but Madison and Randolph’s proposal would shift the power of government in their favor and swathe the political powers of the smaller states, such as New Jersey. This proposal did not go unchallenged and on June 15, 1878, William Paterson would also present his own