A Brief History of the Great Compromise

A widely controversial issue while creating the Constitution was the number of representatives each state would receive. Larger states advocated for the Virginia plan where there would be a two-house legislature, one of which would comprise representatives directly elected by the population while the other was composed of those nominated by the legislators. This legislature would then be responsible for deciding the executive and judicial branches of the government. Smaller states backed the New Jersey Plan where a one-house legislature was supported, with each state receiving one vote. The representatives would be selected by the legislators and this new Congress would now have the power to collect fees and appoint Supreme Court members. The Virginia Plan would allow for larger states to have more power because representation was proportional to the population while the New Jersey Plan would allow smaller states to havae more power because they had the same amount of representation for a smaller population.

This worked out to satisfaction of the smaller states and for the larger states they were given a House of Representatives that would consist of a larger body of representatives for each state in proportion to the amount of the people in that state.

Both the Virginia and New Jersey Plans dealt with how the states should be represented in Congress during the Constitutional Convention. The Virginia Plan wanted a strong national government with a bicameral legislature, while the New Jersey Plan wanted a weak national government with a unicameral legislature. The Virginia Plan favored big states such as Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania while New Jersey Plan favored small states such as New Jersey and Rhode Island. The Virginia Plan believed that states should be represented according to their population and the greater the population of a state, the more representatives they would have. While The New Jersey Plan called for every state to receive the same number of representatives,

The framers decided to build the checks and balances because they feared the branches would gain too much powers and probably take over the congress and they also feared that the branches would change everything

However, this plan favors the larger states such as Virginia when it comes to voting. Article two of the Virginia Plan clearly states that the “rights of suffrage in the National Legislature ought to be proportioned to the Quotas of contribution, or to the number of free inhabitants…” If the Virginia Plan were to fully be put in effect, this would mean that smaller states would get little or no say while larger states would dominate.

On the other hand, delegates from less populous states favored the New Jersey Plan which declared that all states would have an equal amount of votes. This idea goes back to the Articles of Confederation giving each state one vote. Both ideas were strongly reinforced by their respective sides, but they needed to be combined together in a way that would satisfy both large and small states.

During the 1800’s, many conflicts and disagreements brought the nation to its ruins and originated the American Civil War which couldn’t have been avoided at any cost. A Compromise is an agreement developed in which the two groups meet halfway in order to prevent something bad from happening. The Abolitionist movement, on the other hand, is the general reaction people against the practice of slavery overtook to end slavery during the 1800’s. By 1835, the main concern was what everyone questioned themselves, how can we be considered a free country when we have slaves? Due to this, Abolitionist either encouraged slaves to rise up in revolt, or helped slaves escape because they too, had experienced the cruelty and mistreatment. The Missouri Compromise is the preparations provided for the acknowledgment of Maine as a free state along with

Citizens were also fearful that any person they put into power, could possibly abuse the jurisdiction in which they were given. “They uniformly exercise all the powers granted to them, and ninety-nine in a hundred are for grasping at more”(Document G). This proposes that all those given power, always wanted more power. The high figures seemed to never be satisfied and this concerned Americans on the leadership of the country. “...It is of high importance that powerful checks should be formed to prevent the abuse of it” (Document G). To ensure that no leader could take advantage of the power one was given, checks and balances were created. This made each branch of government keep each other balanced and not over powerful on making decisions. The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branch all possess certain jurisdictions that only allow them so much power. This checks and balances system creates an equal government in the United States in each branch of

On the question of state representation, the delegates were not able to come to a decision on which plan to use (the Virginia or the New Jersey plan). The Virginia plan had three branches of government and two houses in the legislature, representing the states in Congress. The number of representatives for each state were based on population. Bigger states would have a larger say in the federal government. The New Jersey plan also had three branches of government, but only one house in Congress and each state would have equal representation, independent of population.

The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848).

In early America many compromises were made to avoid conflict, although there was one major disagreement the northern and southern Americans had which compromises cannot be made upon. There were many attempts, but the states kept breaking the rules. This debate was based on slavery, which the southerners believed it was a necessity to their economy and everyday lives, and the northerners believed that it’s cruelty. The Americans kept trying to fix the issue peacefully, but when there was no agreement reached, so the southern states seceded from America and united together to become a new country called the Confederate States of America. After the secession many battles occurred in many of the states in America.

Although Northerns opposed the concept of slavery, they viewed blacks as inferior to whites. One main concern of the North was that freed or escaped slaves would overrun the North. This would lead to fewer jobs for whites as they competed against the freed slaves for the limited number of jobs. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (Avalon Project) was passed through Congress as a result of a compromise that allowed southern slaveholders to recapture their escaped slaves that fled across the Mason Dixon to Northern states.

The Compromise of 1850 was the result of many years of tension regarding the issue of slavery, and the plethora of problems that came with it, such as the admission of slave and free states into the Union, and fugitive slave laws. The Compromise was a package of 5 separate bills passed in the United States in September of 1850, which helped to diffuse a massive conflict that had been brewing for four-years between the pro-slave Southern states and anti-slave Northern states. The Compromise was drafted by Whig Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and brokered by Clay and Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas and helped to reduce sectional conflict for a short time. Naturally, controversy arose over the Fugitive Slave provision of the Compromise. At the time, the compromise was greeted with certain degree of relief from both sides, although the North and the South were both able to see that this draft was only a temporary solution to an ever-growing national problem.

The plan was a bicameral national legislature, where members of the lower chamber would be allocated among the states by population and directly elected by the citizenry. The lower chamber would elect members of the upper chamber from lists of nominees supplied by the state legislatures (pg. 58). The Virginia Plan was favored by large states. An alternative plan that was presented at the Convention by William Paterson was the New Jersey Plan. The New Jersey Plan was a single-house chamber with equal representation for each state regardless of population. The New Jersey Plan gave Congress the authority to force the states to comply with its tax requisitions. The plan also allowed a simple majority vote to enact national policy rather than the supermajority required in the Articles. The New Jersey Plan was favored by delegates who supported states’ rights (59). The solution was The Great Compromise. The Great Compromise was the agreement between large and small states at the Constitutional Convention that decided the selection and composition of Congress. The Great Compromise would have a two-chamber legislature. The Congress stipulated that the lower chamber (House of

Because we frequently work in large, diverse groups, it often difficult to gauge on everyone's demands and deliver satisfying results to each member. Therefore, we often find ourselves in need of making decisions collectively, often at some group members' disdain. To reduce this occurrence, we need to make compromises. Human history is a history of compromises. Connecticut Compromise, Missouri Compromise, and the Compromise of 1850 are all compromises that delivered historically significant results. In our daily lives, although the compromises we make do not carry historically significant results like the three did, they carry the transformative power to alleviate our differences. For example, as a Wikipedia patroller, I often nominate substandard