The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State. [U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 1]
During the summer of 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia established equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House of Representatives. Called the “Great Compromise” or the “Connecticut Compromise,” this unique plan for congressional representation resolved the most controversial aspect of the drafting of the Constitution.
The Virginia Plan, drafted by James Madison and introduced to the Convention by Edmund Randolph on May 29, 1787, proposed the creation of a bicameral national legislature, or a legislature consisting of two houses, in which the “rights of suffrage” in both houses would be proportional to the size of the state. When delegates from small states objected to this idea, delegates from the larger states argued that their states contributed more of the nation’s financial and defensive resources than small states and therefore ought to have a greater say in the central government. This proposal also reflected a vision of national government that differed from the government under the Articles of Confederation in which each state had an equal voice. Madison argued that “whatever reason might have existed for the equality . . . when the Union was a federal one among sovereign States, it must cease when a national Government should be put into place.”
Delegates from the smaller states insisted on preserving the equal vote they had enjoyed under the Articles of Confederation. “A confederacy,” New Jersey’s William Paterson stated, “supposes sovereignty in the members composing it & sovereignty supposes equality.”
On June 11 the delegates voted to adopt proportional representation in the House of Representatives based on the “whole number of white & other free Citizens,” and “three fifths of all other persons,” meaning enslaved African Americans. Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, with support from Oliver Ellsworth, also from Connecticut, immediately moved that states have equal suffrage in the Senate. Sherman stated that “Everything depended on this. The smaller States would never agree to the plan on any other principle than an equality of suffrage” in the Senate. The motion was defeated by one vote.
In response, William Paterson proposed what became known as the New Jersey Plan, presenting it to the Convention on June 15. The centerpiece of Paterson’s plan was a unicameral [one-house] legislature in which each state had a single vote. The Convention voted down Paterson’s proposal on June 19 and affirmed its commitment to a bicameral legislature on June 21.
The small-state delegates continued to protest proportional representation in the Senate with increasingly heated language, threatening to unravel the proceedings. When another vote on equal representation in the Senate resulted in a tie on July 2, however, the small shift opened the possibility for compromise.
The Convention appointed a “Grand Committee” to reach a final resolution on the question. The committee reported the original Sherman compromise proposal with the added provision, suggested by Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, that revenue and spending bills would only originate in the House. Madison and others continued to press their case for proportional representation in the Senate and to oppose a House monopoly on revenue bills, while some small-state delegates were reluctant even to support proportional representation in the House. On July 16, delegates narrowly adopted the mixed representation plan giving states equal votes in the Senate.
The Great Compromise of 1787, also known as the Sherman Compromise, was an agreement reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 between delegates of the states with large and small populations that defined the structure of Congress and the number of representatives each state would have in Congress according to the United States Constitution. Under the agreement proposed by Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman, Congress would be a “bicameral” or two-chambered body, with each state getting a number of representatives in the lower chamber [the House] proportional to its population and two representatives in the upper chamber [the Senate].
Key Takeaways: Great Compromise
- The Great Compromise of 1787 defined the structure of the U.S. Congress and the number of representatives each state would have in Congress under the U.S. Constitution.
- The Great Compromise was brokered as an agreement between the large and small states during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 by Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman.
- Under the Great Compromise, each state would get two representatives in the Senate and a variable number of representatives in the House in proportion to its population according to the decennial U.S. census.
Perhaps the greatest debate undertaken by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 centered on how many representatives each state should have in the new government's lawmaking branch, the U.S. Congress. As is often the case in government and politics, resolving a great debate required a great compromise—in this case, the Great Compromise of 1787. Early in the Constitutional Convention, delegates envisioned a Congress consisting of only a single chamber with a certain number of representatives from each state.
Weeks before the Constitutional Convention convened on July 16, 1787, the framers had already made several important decisions about how the Senate should be structured. They rejected a proposal to have the House of Representatives elect senators from lists submitted by the individual state legislatures and agreed that those legislatures should elect their senators. In fact, until the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, all U.S. Senators were appointed by the state legislatures rather than elected by the people.
By the end of its first day in session, the convention had already set the minimum age for senators at 30 and the term length at six years, as opposed to 25 for House members, with two-year terms. James Madison explained that these distinctions, based on “the nature of the senatorial trust, which requires greater extent of information and stability of character,” would allow the Senate “to proceed with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom than the popular[ly elected] branch.”
However, the issue of equal representation threatened to destroy the seven-week-old convention. Delegates from the large states believed that because their states contributed proportionally more in taxes and military resources, they should enjoy proportionally greater representation in the Senate as well as in the House. Delegates from small states argued—with similar intensity—that all states should be equally represented in both houses.
When Roger Sherman proposed the Great Compromise, Benjamin Franklin agreed that each state should have an equal vote in the Senate in all matters—except those involving revenue and spending.
Over the Fourth of July holiday, delegates worked out a compromise plan that sidetracked Franklin’s proposal. On July 16, the convention adopted the Great Compromise by a suspenseful margin of one vote. Many historians have noted that without that vote, there would likely have been no U.S. Constitution today.
Representation
The burning question was, how many representatives from each state? Delegates from the larger, more populous states favored the Virginia Plan, which called for each state to have a different number of representatives based on the state’s population. Delegates from smaller states supported the New Jersey Plan, under which each state would send the same number of representatives to Congress.
Delegates from the smaller states argued that, despite their lower populations, their states held equal legal status to that of the larger states, and that proportional representation would be unfair to them. Delegate Gunning Bedford, Jr. of Delaware notoriously threatened that the small states could be forced to “find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith, who will take them by the hand and do them justice.”
However, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts objected to the small states’ claim of legal sovereignty, stating that
“we never were independent States, were not such now, and never could be even on the principles of the Confederation. The States and the advocates for them were intoxicated with the idea of their sovereignty.”
Sherman's Plan
Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman is credited with proposing the alternative of a "bicameral," or two-chambered Congress made up of a Senate and a House of Representatives. Each state, suggested Sherman, would send an equal number of representatives to the Senate, and one representative to the House for every 30,000 residents of the state.
At the time, all the states except Pennsylvania had bicameral legislatures, so the delegates were familiar with the structure of Congress proposed by Sherman.
Sherman’s plan pleased delegates from both the large and small states and became known as the Connecticut Compromise of 1787, or the Great Compromise.
The structure and powers of the new U.S. Congress, as proposed by the delegates of the Constitutional Convention, were explained to the people by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers.
Apportionment and Redistricting
Today, each state is represented in Congress by two Senators and a variable number of members of the House of Representatives based on the state’s population as reported in the most recent decennial census. The process of fairly determining the number of members of the House from each state is called "apportionment."
The first census in 1790 counted 4 million Americans. Based on that count, the total number of members elected to the House of Representatives grew from the original 65 to 106. The current House membership of 435 was set by Congress in 1911.
Redistricting to Ensure Equal Representation
To ensure fair and equal representation in the House, the process of “redistricting” is used to establish or change the geographic boundaries within the states from which representatives are elected.
In the 1964 case of Reynolds v. Sims, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all of the congressional districts in each state must all have roughly the same population.
Through apportionment and redistricting, high population urban areas are prevented from gaining an inequitable political advantage over less populated rural areas.
For example, if New York City were not split into several congressional districts, the vote of a single New York City resident would carry more influence on the House than all of the residents in the rest of the State of New York combined.
How the 1787 Compromise Impacts Modern Politics
While the populations of the states varied in 1787, the differences were far less pronounced than they are today. For example, the 2020 population of Wyoming at 549,914 pales in comparison to California’s 39.78 million. As a result, one then-unforeseen political impact of the Great Compromise is that states with smaller populations have disproportionately more power in the modern Senate. While California is home to almost 70% more people than Wyoming, both states have two votes in the Senate.
“The founders never imagined … the great differences in the population of states that exist today,” said political scientist George Edwards III of Texas A&M University. “If you happen to live in a low-population state you get a disproportionately bigger say in American government.”
Due to this proportionate imbalance of voting power, interests in smaller states, such as coal mining in West Virginia or corn farming in Iowa, are more likely to benefit from federal funding through tax breaks and crop subsidies.
The Framer’s intent to “protect” the smaller states through equal representation in the Senate also manifests itself in the Electoral College, as each state’s number of electoral votes is based on its combined number of representatives in the House and Senate. For example, in Wyoming, the state with the smallest population, each of its three electors represents a far smaller group of people than each of the 55 electoral votes cast by California, the most populous state.