Great Compromise (Connecticut Compromise) in AP US History

Virginia Plan vs. New Jersey Plan in the summer of 1787

Under the Articles of Confederation, each state got one vote in the Confederation Congress, so tiny Delaware counted the same as Virginia. James Madison's Virginia Plan, introduced at the Convention by Edmund Randolph, replaced that with representation by population in both houses of a new legislature. That gave the most populous states the most power.

Small states pushed back with William Paterson's New Jersey Plan, which kept one equal vote per state in a single-house legislature. Each side argued from a real principle. Large states said a government acting on the people should reflect how many people each state had. Small states said the Union was a partnership of equal states and they'd be swallowed without equal votes.

This is exactly what Topic 3.8 (The Constitutional Convention and Debates Over Ratification) in Unit 3 (1754-1800) asks you to explain: contrasting ideas about how the federal government should be built. The representation dispute is the clearest case of delegates disagreeing about that.

Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut backed the middle path, which is why it carries the state's name. The Convention adopted it in July 1787.

What large and small states each got

Each side won one chamber. Large states got the House, where seats follow population and get recounted through a census every ten years. Small states got the Senate, where every state has two seats.

Large states also got a sweetener: bills to raise revenue have to start in the House. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures, not by voters, which reinforced the idea that the Senate represented states as states. That changed with the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.

The compromise also shaped the Electoral College later in the Convention. A state's electoral votes equal its House seats plus its two Senate seats, so the small-state advantage built into the Senate carries into presidential elections.

A separate deal over counting enslaved people

Basing representation on population raised the question of who counted. Delegates were already arguing over how to count enslaved people for representation and taxation before the Great Compromise was adopted. Southern delegates wanted enslaved people counted to increase their seats, and Northern delegates objected.

That dispute was settled by the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted three-fifths of the enslaved population for both House representation and direct taxes.

This connects to a second slavery bargain. The Constitution barred Congress from banning the international slave trade before 1808, which meant a ban could come after that year. Congress passed one, effective in 1808. Notice the limiting word: only the international trade was banned, while slavery itself and the domestic slave trade continued.

Keep the two deals straight when you explain compromise at the Convention. The Great Compromise settled the large-state versus small-state dispute, while the separate Three-Fifths Compromise addressed an already-contested question about representation and taxation.

The Great Compromise did not count enslaved people

The wrong answer to watch for credits the Great Compromise with the three-fifths rule. They're separate deals from the same summer. The Great Compromise set the structure: population in the House, equality in the Senate. The Three-Fifths Compromise decided how enslaved people counted toward that population.

A second trap is calling the Senate the large-state win. Large states had the edge in the House, while equal Senate seats protected small states. If an answer choice says the compromise gave populous states more senators, it's wrong.

Using the compromise as evidence of bargaining at the Convention

Stimulus-based multiple-choice questions on the Convention can draw on sources like a Convention speech, a Federalist or Anti-Federalist excerpt, or a diagram of the branches. Questions on those sets can ask you to identify the dispute behind a source or explain how a debate was resolved. The Great Compromise answers both: the dispute was large versus small states, and the resolution was a bicameral Congress.

In a short-answer question asking how the Constitution differed from the Articles of Confederation, or how compromise shaped the new government, specifics earn the point. Name both plans, state what each side gained, and tie the result to the shift from one-state-one-vote to a split system.

For the Document-based question or Long essay on the creation of the Constitution, the compromise works as outside evidence for the argument that the framers built the government through mutual concessions instead of agreement on one blueprint. It's strongest when you pair it with the Three-Fifths Compromise and the 1808 slave trade clause, which show compromise protecting slavery's political power.