Historians sometimes talk about the constitutional convention of 1787 as “the miracle of Philadelphia.” Why? This is Part TWO of the answer.
While the framers of our constitution agreed on the basics of republican government, there were other things that caused deep division. Some delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention were alarmed by James Madison’s “Virginia Plan” for the new national government. Delegates from small states like Delaware and New Jersey opposed Madison’s proposal that representatives in both houses of Congress be allocated among the states by size of population. Under the Virginia Plan, the most populous states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York would have the most senators and representatives and thus dominate the Congress and the national government. In response, William Paterson of New Jersey introduced a plan that came to be called the New Jersey or “small state” plan.
In it, New Jersey agreed with the Virginia Plan that the national government should have more power to regulate commerce and levy taxes but proposed that instead of one president, the executive branch should be a committee, and that instead of two houses in Congress there should be only one. Moreover, each state, large or small, heavily or sparsely populated, should be represented equally in that one-house Congress. Thus, the small states claimed, would protect them from being ruled by the larger, more populous states.
Eventually, Roger Sherman of Connecticut proposed what would come to be known as the Connecticut Compromise: a senate where each state had two senators, but a House of Representatives based on population, where larger states like Virginia would have much more power than smaller ones like Delaware and New Jersey. That system, which perseveres to this day, resulted from actions all too rare today, yet still essential to any republic: calm discussion and compromise.
"The History of Our Freedoms" is produced by KEDT-FM in Corpus Christi. Dr. Bill Chriss is a historian and legal scholar. For more on history and the constitution, check out his blog at https://drbillchriss.substack.com/.
