The US Constitution
Becomes A “Bundle of
Compromises”
The 55 delegates of the Constitutional Convention wanted to establish a government with enough authority to
govern effectively while protecting individual liberties. However, despite this shared goal, several heated
arguments between the Convention’s delegates almost prevented the US Constitution from being written. In
today’s lesson, we will focus on 3 of these arguments & the compromises that were established to settle them.
The Great Compromise [Connecticut Plan]
One of the first arguments that needed to be resolved dealt with representation in Congress. How many
Congressmen would represent each state? Delegates from Virginia proposed the Virginia Plan, which suggested
that each state’s membership to Congress should be proportional to its population. Therefore, states with big
populations should have more members in Congress. Delegates from large states supported the Virginia Plan.
In opposition, the delegates from small states favored the New Jersey Plan. This plan suggested that every state
[no matter the size of its population] should have the same number of representatives in Congress.
Ultimately, the matter of representation was settled by what is known as the Great Compromise [or
Connecticut Plan] which combined elements of the Virginia Plan & New Jersey Plan. The Great Compromise
established a bicameral or two house legislature. The upper house is called the Senate. Every state is provided
with 2 senators. The lower house is called the House of Representatives. The amount of representatives that
each state has is proportional to its population. 1 Representative position exists for every 130,000 people that
live in each state. The government studies census records to ensure that each state has the correct amount of
representatives in Congress. [The census is a survey that the US government distributes every 10 years to
obtain statistical data about our citizens. The census tallies America’s total population & gathers additional
information regarding the occupations, income & education of our nation’s inhabitants].
The Three-Fifths Compromise
As already discussed, each state’s membership to the House of Representatives is proportional to its
population. Resultantly, states with larger populations are provided with more Representatives than states with
smaller populations. Keeping that in mind, southern states [who possessed extremely large slave populations]
wanted slaves to be counted when calculating how many Representatives a state has in Congress. Northern
states [who had a very few slaves within their borders] argued that since slaves were not US citizens [&
possessed no political rights] they shouldn’t be factored into this equation.
Finally, Congress agreed to a plan called the Three-Fifths Compromise. According to this compromise, each
enslaved person would count as 3/5 of a free person. Thus, 500 slaves would count as 300 free people. The
Three-Fifths Compromise was a tremendous setback for African Americans. It helped to preserve slavery in the
US by making a clear distinction between free people & slaves.
The Presidency Compromise
Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted the US President to be elected directly by the people &
to have a long term of office. Contrarily, other delegates wanted the President to be chosen by Congress & to
have a short term of office.
Eventually, the delegates set up a very complex system for electing the President, called the Electoral College.
In fact, when American citizens vote in the popular election for President, they DO NOT vote directly for the
candidate of their choice. Rather, they vote for a group of “Electors” who are pledged to the candidate. The
number of Electors in each state is equal to the number of Senators & Representatives that it has. A few weeks
after Election Day, these Electors meet in designated locations within each state to cast their votes for
President.
The candidate who earns the most Electoral College votes nationwide becomes President. In most cases, the
Presidential candidate who wins the popular election wins the Electoral College election too. However, in the
2000 election, Al Gore [Democrat] won the popular election but ultimately lost the Presidency because George
W. Bush [Republican] earned more votes in the Electoral College election. In addition, in our most recent
election, Hillary Clinton
[Democrat] earned more
popular votes but lost the
Electoral College election, which
guaranteed a Presidential victory
for Donald Trump [Republican].
[This map shows how many
Electoral College votes were up
for grabs in last year’s
Presidential election. A
candidate needed to earn 270 of
these votes to become President
of the United States].