Sherman's Arguments For Leaving The Convention

The framers of the Constitution had a set image they wanted to put forth in America, and to get the document ratified they were forced to make compromises. Two of the most important compromises are the 3/5 clause and “Great Compromise”. During, the Constitutional Convention there was a deadlock about representation. Arguments from both sides seem valid, big states argue representation should be based on population while, small states argue it should be equal representation. In need for a solution, a few men proposed a bicameral legislature. Which, allows for both population based representation, and equal presentation by having a House of Representatives and a Senate. The Senate has equal representation that allows 2 senators from each state,

1) The Great Compromise, also known as the Connecticut Compromise or The Sherman Compromise, focused on representation in the legislative branch. This compromise was written by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut and it passed with a single vote, quite possibly saving the Constitution. The delegates were stranded on the issue of representation within the legislative branch because larger states supported representation based on state population (proportional representation) and smaller states supported one vote per state. This was a division between the Virginia and New Jersey plans. These were the two plans presented to the delegates. The Virginia Plan offered a bicameral branch with proportional representation and the New Jersey Plan policies favored a unicameral branch and equal representation

The Virginia Plan sparked debate over its legislative representative proposals. The plan proposed representation of the states by population. This proposition favored the larger states. The Jersey Plan also known as the smaller state plan rallied for equal representation for all states. A compromise was finally reached. One house of the legislature would consist of two representatives from each state. This satisfied the small states. The second house of the legislature would consist of representatives based on population, thus satisfying the larger states. The establishment of a fair measure to apply taxation and representation in the legislature was described in the Federalist Papers: The Apportionment of Members among the States. The government would conduct a census that would prevent the states from understating their population for taxation and overstating their population for representation. The “Great Compromise” resolving the issue of representation did not mean that the federalists and anti-federalists had come to agreement on the Constitution.

Madison’s national veto also weakened the Virginia Plan, since the national government’s supreme judgment could only cause resentment by local authorities grappling with purely local issues. To counteract Madison’s bold proposal, delegates from the smaller states, headed by New Jersey’s William Paterson, offered a competing plan, the New Jersey Plan. To its credit, the New Jersey Plan amended the Articles of Confederation by adding a plural executive and a judiciary appointed by the executive branch. The New Jersey Plan proposed proportional representation in both houses of Congress to protect the smaller states. Although the addition of an executive would have strengthened the existing confederation, it resulted in a weak plural head of state. Furthermore, since the New Jersey Plan merely amended the Articles, and since the Articles had never been amended given the necessity of a unanimous vote by all of the states, the Plan was almost certainly doomed to

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.

The 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention involved an extensive amount of compromise among the delegates in order to finalize the U.S. Constitution into the structure that it is known for today. On one end of the spectrum were states' righters, or Antifederalists, who were often delegates from smaller states such as Connecticut, and who sought to scale back the power of the federal government. On the other end of the spectrum were the Federalists, who wanted a strong national government to unite the nation. Additionally, there were other delegates who could not be put into such clear-cut categories. What followed at the convention was the process of compromise: a group of men with different ideas about how government should be structured,

Compromise—that means to come to an agreement, a settlement that brings peace, but not without some discomfort for both sides. This compromise is hopefully long-lasting and satisfying to both sides and brings with it a rest. The Compromise of 1850 sounds like exactly that, but there is more to this compromise. This “compromise” came when there was much dispute about the future of the western lands recently acquired from the Mexican government—California, Utah, and New Mexico. The Southerners of America wanted the states entered into the union as slave states, while the Northerners wanted them entered as free states. When this issue became more heated and continued to escalate, "The Great Compromiser,” Mr. Henry Clay himself, came out of retirement to do “his thing” and create a compromise. He proposed that California would enter the union as a Slave State and Utah and New Mexico would enter as neutral, being neither a slave nor free state. Parts of both the North and the South hated and liked this plan. Some misanthropists in the South threatened to secede from the union and while the majority knew that to be rubbish at the time, it did eventually come true with the start of the Civil War. The North wanted to see slavery come to an end and were fighting tooth and nail to see that through. After months of debating and changes made to Clay’s compromise it was eventually put into action. There was still unrest in both the North and South, and the compromise only

The Compromise of 1850 was drafted in response to the threat of a Southern Convention, because of Zachary Taylors decision to carve out two huge territories in the Far West and to admit them in the union as free states. Henry Clay drafted the compromise, which includes eight parts. "The first pair would admit California as a State and organize the remainder of the Mexican cession without "any restriction or condition on the subject of slavery". The second pair of resolutions settled the boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico in favor of the latter and compensated Texas by federal assumption of debts contracted during its existence as an Independent Republic. Clay 's third pair of resolutions called for abolition of the slave trade

The government was set up with a one house legislature, where states could each have one single vote in the house, no matter the size of the state. This created disputes between bigger states, who wanted more votes because of the fact they had more

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.

The first issue that they were given was the interests of small and large states. James Madison created the Virginia Plan, which allowed “congress virtually unrestricted powers to legislate, levy taxes, veto state laws, and authorize military force against the states” (Boyer). The plan also wanted a bicameral legislative branch and representation based off of population. Many delegates opposed this plan because they did not think that representation based

Squire and Hamm discussed how the modern day legislatures in the United States come from common ancestors and the evolution from the unicameral system to the bicameral. The authors also show how the idea of institutional diffusion occurred with one state beginning to form a constitution and structure, then others following suit soon after in most cases.

One of the first debates over the institution of the National Executive was whether the Executive should “consist of a single person” as motioned by James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, and seconded by Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina. The idea of a single Executive met with strong opposition due to conjuring images of their former oppression under British rule. Due to the fact that all delegates were old enough to remember, many of them to have fought against, the rule by Britain, it was easy for them to compare what they were trying to create to what they already knew and in some cases detested. To defend against the Executive morphing into a monarchy there was a suggestion of a three person Executive branch that was put forward by Randolph who felt the people would not properly support a signal Executive. The idea of a three person branch would give a representative from the Northern, Middle, and Southern States. Pierce Butler of South Carolina, having seen firsthand in Holland the issues caused by “plurality,” strongly objected. As happened many times during the convention the motion was postponed. James Madison made the suggestion that the powers of the president devised before there be a decision of single or plural Executive stating, “definition of their extent would assist the judgment in determining how far they might safely entrusted to a single officer.”

The Constitution has been described as "a bundle of compromises." As you have seen, such prominent features of the Constitution as the different plans for representation in the House and the Senate and the method of selecting the president were settled by compromise. Compromise, however, means that everyone gets less than they want. There were enough compromises in the completed Constitution that nearly every delegate could find something he did not like. During the four months the delegates had spent putting the Constitution together, there were some strong disagreements. Some had walked out of the convention. Three refused to sign the finished document.

But the smaller states would not nudge, they wanted to keep equal representation. The debate kept growing until Connecticut proclaimed that there should be only one house with representatives and states to have equal.