What was the Great Compromise

The Senate and the House of Representatives, which now very much in sync and merged well in the whole system of USA, were not exactly that a few centuries back. In fact there was a lot of friction between the very concept of these two and their level of representation. In came the Connecticut Compromise, which is also known as the Great Compromise, in the year 1787. It was the base of how the US Congress was going to be in the future. Now the Congress of USA is more or less based on what this Act in 1787 laid down. But what was this Act in the US Constitution I am talking about? What was the Great Compromise? If historical accounts and constitutional affairs interest you, then you might want to read the following text. I will try to make an attempt to answer this question and get a Great Compromise definition by dealing with answers to the questions below.

What Was the Great Compromise of 1787?

Also known as Sherman's Compromise, this Act was passed in connection with the Congressional representation of each state. The bone of contention was that if population is the criteria how will the less populous states be represented and if size is the criteria, wouldn't the larger states get the meat. So a compromise, an agreement was reached upon, between the smaller and the larger states, a pivotal event in the American history It was reached in the year 1787, at a Constitutional Convention. It is called the Sherman's Compromise because Roger Sherman was one of the pioneers of the bicameral legislature for the US Congress along with Oliver Ellsworth. They started working on this in May, 1787. The agreement, simply put, took the cues from the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. The Virginia plan stated that the membership of the house was to be allocated as per the population, with candidates nominated and elected by people of each state, which as picked up by Sherman and Ellsworth. The New Jersey plan called for allocation of two representatives from each state, no matter what the size and the population.

The only thing was that the members of the upper house were elected by the State legislature initially, till the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified. This seventeenth amendment proposed direct election of senators by the people. So the Great Compromise picked up from these two and the bicameral legislature was conceived. The Compromise was passed on July 16 in the same year after a lot of rounds of debate.

What Happened Next?

Basically, the compromise on the legislative representation was sorted out in the Constitutional Convention. The Great Compromise of 1787 charted out bicameral legislature. In addition to that in the Constitutional Convention, which had it sessions for 89 days, the articles of Confederation too were worked. All the same, the Great Compromise, even though it got the nod of approval, was not the end of it all. The debates and the discussions continued and the 3/5 compromise took place. This complicated and wrangled the issue of representation.

Likewise, the Great Compromise of 1850, too, dealt with a similar issue and got the Southern slave states and northern states at loggerheads. If it would not have been for this compromise, there would have been the Mexican American war sooner than it eventually happened. That was all about the Great Compromise and what passed before and after that! Interesting, wasn't it?