The Great Compromise (reached in 1787, during the debates over the proposed Constitution) was an agreement between the U.S. small and large states to create two chambers within the legislative branch: an upper chamber called the Senate, that consisted of two representatives of each of the states, regardless of the state's population, and a lower chamber called the House of Representatives whose number of members had to be based on each state’s population. Since then, this bicameral structure has remained the same.
