Roger Sherman Dbq Analysis

As mentioned in the module, "Lecture Notes for Chapter 2 The Constitution", the Three-Fifths Compromise or "the three-fifths rule", was put into motion as a way to appease Northern delegates while also preventing the Southern delegates from leaving the convention. The compromise ultimately states, "The three-fifths meant that the House of Representatives and the electoral college would be apportioned in part of the basis of property--specifically, property in slaves" (Bardes, Shelley, Schmidt 42-43). In other words, this referred to slaves in that each one would be counted as three fifths of a person, which benefited slave owners the most as that meant they would have more people from the South when it came to determining the representation in Congress. which is how the interests of Southern states were addressed.

The Lower house would be elected by the people, but the Upper house would be elected by the Lower house. The New Jersey Plan explained that the Executive Branch would be chosen by Congress, and the elected individuals would only serve a single term. Some people were subject to recall on request of state governors.

I believe that the Virginia plan is much wiser than the New Jersey plan because it was proportional, or corresponding in size, to the population in state. The best plan is this one because it has two legislative houses (Bicameral), the Senate and the House of Representatives. We each get to vote for the representatives we want. The New Jersey plan only has one Legislative house (unicameral) and it only gets one vote for each state this is what deprived the smaller states from equality. The New Jersey Plan had so many disagreements that it had to appoint a “grand committee” and then it was known as the Great Compromise (An agreement between two or more sides in which each side gives up what some of what it wants).

There were two major plans for government submitted by the states: the Virginia plan- A.K.A the Large States plan, and the New Jersey Plan- A.K.A the Small States Plan. The Virginia Plan was made to specifically benefit the large, slave-holding, southern states. It called for a bicameral legislature which would take a state’s population into account when selecting the number of senators and representatives for a state. This would have given massive power to the southern states which had large populations due to slaves as opposed to the free, northern states. In reply to this was the New Jersey Plan, which was unicameral and gave equal representation to each state regardless of population.

Virginia Plan, or the large state plan, proposed that each state would have a number of votes based on the population. The New Jersey Plan, or the small state plan, asked for an equal number of representatives regardless of the population of the state. Obviously, smaller states would benefit from the small state plan and vice versa for the larger states. The Great Compromise combined the two plans by creating a House of Representatives which drew representatives from each state based from the state's population and the Senate which consisted of two elected senators from each state, regardless of the population. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate took action in politics and both the small and large states were satisfied.

While both the slave and non-slave states were represented equally in the upper house, the slave states had greater representation overall in the lower house. This imbalance had long-lasting implications on the composition of the national government, since the South was granted more representation in the Electoral College. Being able to control the fate of the government outweighed the cost of the extra taxation posed by the three-fifths of the slave population. In addition, the North did not directly benefit from this concession from the South because the increased taxes from the slave states went towards the reserves of the federal government, which served to promote welfare in the nation as a

The Missouri Compromise was made as an attempt to deal with the debate that had been going on about slavery. It lasted thirty-four years, but never truly made the North orouth totally happy with the situation. Although the Missouri Compromise did push back the debate on slavery in Missouri, it did not solve the problem as a whole. The tension between the North and South was, in fact reduced for a period of time. Once the Missouri Compromise was declared unconstitutional, the tension once again grew.

If anyone was to do even a little research about the United States in 1787, one would find that the states were not very unified and life was not easy. Men like, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington had one thing in mind, to reunite the United States. The book, A Brilliant Solution by Carol Berkin, very clearly depicts the obstacles and adversity that the men attending the constitutional convention had to overcome. Due to a plethora of factors, the men attending the constitutional convention encountered many complications during the convention, ranging from travel issues to a lack of power to even do anything necessary to change the “United” States. The book shows this by describing the story of the men as a “story of anxious

They also “included the three-fifths clause which states that in deciding how many representatives a state could send to the house of representatives, the number would be determined by counting free persons, servants, in three-fifths of all other persons { slaves }. Congress was to use the same count for collecting taxes from the states”. Indians were excluded. Finally the framers agreed to include the fugitive slave clause which states that persons who escape from slavery to a state where slavery was prohibited “ shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due”. The compromise on slavery was designed to satisfy the demands of some of the southern states these states would not have supported the constitution without this agreement.

The Virginia Plan was proposed in order to settle disagreements among states over the issue of representation. Due to the extreme differences in population between the states, larger states wanted representation to be based off of population, while the smaller states wanted representation to be equal for all states regardless of population. Today the U.S. government still uses population as a way of representation in parliament. In addition to the Virginia Plan, the 3/5’s Compromise was also created as a way to settle conflicts. This compromise was reached, because southern states wanted slaves to count as part of the population and order to get more representation, while the northern states did not.

After no progress of which plan to go through with, Roger Sherman came up with the Great Compromise. The compromise called for two house legislator. Members of the house of representatives or the lower house would be elected by popular vote. Members of the Senate or the upper house would be chosen by the state legislators. Each state would only have two senators no matter the size, or population of the state.

During the Constitutional Convention, the issue of whether slaves should be counted as part of the population when determining the number of representatives in Congress was also addressed. The southern states, where most slaves presented at that point in time, wanted to count slaves as part of their population because they wanted to have more representatives in Congress to strengthen their power (each state was allowed to have one representative for every 30,000 residents). The northern states, on the other hand, opposed this proposal because of two reasons: slaves were treated more like a property than human since they did not own any rights and counting slaves as part of the population would strengthen the power of southern states in Congress.

Virginia Plan was a proposal for a strong national government with a bicameral legislature and a President chosen by the national legislature. The New Jersey Plan was a proposal for a unicameral legislature with equal representation for each state and a President chosen by Congress. The Great Compromise, also known as the Connecticut Plan, was a compromise between the Virginia and New Jersey Plans that established a bicameral legislature with representation based on population in the House of Representatives and equal representation in the Senate, and a President elected through an electoral college. The pros of the Virginia Plan included the creation of a strong national government and representation based on population.

The Three-Fifths Compromise is no longer needed today since America abolished slavery in 1865, but it did help the South gain more representation that they needed compared to the states with larger

The upper house would be elected by the lower house, thus ensuring that there is always at least one representative in the upper house. The New Jersey Plan preserved an existing unicameral legislature, in which each state would have equal representation. The compromise that was made called for a bicameral legislature, like the 1 Virginia Plan. However, the lower house number of representatives was determined by the size of the state, and the upper house each state had equal representation. This was just part of the Great Compromise, the subject of slavery had divided the Northern and the Southern states.