government, they had to decide how to allot power among the states. Should all states count the same in decision making, or should the large states have more power than the small ones? The rules chosen here would have a crucial impact on the politics of the country. If small states and large states had equal amounts of power in national government, residents of large states such as Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York would actually have less voice in the government than residents of small states like New Jersey and Rhode Island.
Picture two groups of people trying to make a joint decision, each group with one vote to cast. If the first group has fifty people in it and the second has only ten, the individuals in the second group are likely to have more influence on how their single vote is cast than the individuals in the first group. If, however, the first group has five votes to cast and the second only one, the individuals are equally represented, but the second group is effectively reduced in importance when compared to the first. This was the dilemma faced by the representatives of the large and small states at the Constitutional Convention. Each wanted to make sure that the final rules would give the advantage to states like his own.
Snapshot of America: Who Were the Founders?
The Granger Collection, New York
THE BIG PICTURE: How We Got to the Constitution From the Articles of Confederation
Two plans were offered by convention delegates to resolve this issue. The first, the Virginia Plan, was the creation of James Madison. Fearing that his youth and inexperience would hinder the plan’s acceptance, he asked fellow Virginian Edmund Randolph to present it to the convention. The Virginia Plan represented the preference of the large, more populous states. This plan proposed a strong national government run by two legislative houses. One house would be elected directly by the people, one indirectly by a combination of the state legislatures and the popularly elected national house. The numbers of representatives would be determined by the taxes paid by the residents of the state, which would reflect the free population in the state. In other words, large states would have more representatives in both houses of the legislature, and national law and policy would be weighted heavily in their favor. Just three large states—Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania—would be able to form a majority and carry national legislation their way. The Virginia Plan also called for a single executive, to see that the laws were carried out, and a national judiciary, both appointed by the legislature, and it gave the national government the power to override state laws.
Virginia Plan a proposal at the Constitutional Convention that congressional representation be based on population, thus favoring the large states
A different plan, presented by William Paterson of New Jersey, was designed by the smaller states to better protect their interests. The New Jersey Plan amounted to a reinforcement, not a replacement, of the Articles of Confederation. It provided for a multiperson executive, so that no one person could possess too much power, and for congressional acts to be the “supreme law of the land.” Most significantly, however, the Congress would be much like the one that had existed under the Articles. In its one house, each state would have only one vote. The delegates would be chosen by the state legislatures. Congressional power was stronger than under the Articles, but the national government was still dependent on the states for some of its funding. The large states disliked this plan because the small states together could block what the large states wanted, even though the large states had more people and contributed more revenue.
New Jersey Plan a proposal at the Constitutional Convention that congressional representation be equal, thus favoring the small states
The prospects for a new government could have foundered on this issue. The stuffy heat of the closed Convention Hall shortened the tempers of the weary delegates, and frustration made compromise difficult. Each side had too much to lose by yielding to the other’s plan. The solution finally arrived at was politics at its best and shows the triumph of the compromise narrative. The Great Compromise kept much of the framework of the Virginia Plan. It proposed a strong federal structure headed by a central government with sufficient power to tax its citizens, regulate commerce, conduct foreign affairs, organize the military, and exercise other central powers. It called for a single executive and a national judicial system. The compromise that allowed the small states to live with it involved the composition of the legislature. Like the Virginia Plan, it provided for two houses. The House of Representatives would be based on state population, giving the large states the extra clout they felt they deserved, but in the Senate each state would have two votes. This would give the small states much more power in the Senate than in the House of Representatives. Members of the House of Representatives would be elected directly by the people, members of the Senate by the state legislatures. Thus the government would be directly binding on the people as well as on the states. A key to the compromise was that most legislation would need the approval of both houses, so that neither large states nor small states could hold the entire government hostage to their wishes. The small states were sufficiently happy with this plan that most of them voted to ratify the Constitution quickly and easily. See this chapter’s The Big Picture for a visual illustration of how the Founders got from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution.
Great Compromise the constitutional solution to congressional representation: equal votes in the Senate, votes by population in the House
North and South
The compromise reconciling the large and small states was not the only one the delegates crafted. The northern and southern states, which is to say the non-slave-owning and the slave-owning states, were at odds over how population was to be determined for purposes of representation in the lower house of Congress. The southern states wanted to count slaves as part of their population when determining how many representatives they got, even though they had no intention of letting the slaves vote. Including slaves would give them more representatives and thus more power in the House of Representatives. For exactly that reason, the northern states said that if slaves could not vote, they should not be counted. The bizarre compromise, also a triumph of politics if not humanity, is known as the Three-fifths Compromise. It was based on a formula developed by the Confederation Congress in 1763 to allocate tax assessments among the states. According to this compromise, for representation purposes, each slave would count as three-fifths of a person—that is, every five slaves would count as three people. Interestingly, the actual language in the Constitution is a good deal cagier than this. It says that representatives and taxes shall be determined according to population, figured “by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
Three-fifths Compromise the formula for counting five slaves as three people for purposes of representation, which reconciled northern and southern factions at the Constitutional Convention
The issue of slavery was divisive enough for the early Americans that the most politically safe approach was not to mention it explicitly at all and thus to avoid having to endorse or condemn it. Implicitly, of course, the silence had the effect of letting slavery continue. Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, in similarly vague language, allows that
The Migration or
