After the union of the thirteen colonies, the Founding Fathers were concerned that the federal government did not have enough power, which would result in the colonies acting in their own interest. In order to analyse how the government could be improved, representatives of the colonies gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, in what is now called the Constitutional Convention. The result of this convention was the U. S. Constitution, but there were a lot of debates and disagreements before this came to fruition. These are two examples:
<em><u>Example 1:</u></em><u> The Virginia Plan vs. The New Jersey Plan
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The main difference between the Virginia Plan, redacted by James Madison, and the New Jersey Plan, proposed by William Patterson was the allocation of power to states. Madison proposed a system where larger, more populous states would get more legislative representation, while Patterson’s plan argued for equal representation no matter the size of the population. It also argued for a bicameral legislature, as opposed to the Virginia Plan, which argued for bicameralism.
The outcome is known as the Connecticut Compromise, which created two chambers: the House of Representatives was to have the Virginia Plan system (based on population) while the Senate resembled the structure proposed by the New Jersey Plan (one representative per state).
<em><u>Example 2: </u></em><u>Three-Fifths Compromise</u>
Another source of dispute was whether slaves would be counted as people, or as property. If they were counted as people, this would affect the population size of a state, and therefore its number of representants in the House of Representatives. Also, they would be subject to a different kind of taxation.
The compromise is known as the “three-fifths compromise,” because it considered three out of every five slaves as a person for the purpose of measuring population.
