The Great Compromise and How It Reflects American Value of Representation

The Great Compromise and How It Reflects American Value of Representation

The Great Compromise reflects the American value of representative government by making the representation of the state as fair a possible.

Before the great Compromise, The United States had a very unstable government. The government system was the Articles of Confederation, the first form of national government in the United States. It was put into affect during the revolution and gave the government limited power, out of the Americans fear of having another king. It didn’t have the power to tax, or enforce laws. Also, all states had the same amount of power, meaning small states had the same representation as large ones (population wise). Representation was not fair. Basically, the government was weak because it had no power over the states. Through Shay’s rebellion and other events, the states realized that the Articles were too weak to be effective. It was decided that the articles had to be changed, and so, delegates from 12 of the state met in Philadelphia to fix the articles, but instead decided that the articles should be changed entirely.

After realizing the changes that had to be made, the congress called the constitutional convention, to discuss the need to reform the national government. At first, it was merely a discussion of how to make the existing government stronger. But later, one of the Virginian delegates named Edmund Randolph proposed the Virginia plan, a new national government, one that would rule over the states, and proposed that this new national government have a national executive and a national judiciary. He also proposed that the one house of the Confederation Congress be replaced with two houses of a new Congress. These two houses would be an upper and a lower house. The voters of each state would elect the members to the lower house. The members of the upper house would be chosen by state assemblies. Also, the numbers of representatives allowed to each state in both houses would be based on the population in that state....

Similar Essays