Like many constitutions in the world, the U.S constitution has undergone tremendous historic transformations. Many leaders including presidents played significant roles in modeling the U.S constitutions through reviews, amendments and compromises. One of these was the Great Compromise.
This refers to the Constitutional Convention’s accord that was aimed at establish a double-house legislature that was to see every state equally represented in one of the houses with state representation based on population. To put into consideration the existence of smaller states which had lower population, each state was to have equal number of votes in the Senate. On the other hand, the committee put into consideration the existence of larger states by allowing representation in the House of Representatives to be based on population (Henschen & Sidlow, 2008). Conversely, the Virginia Plan proposed a three branched government and a duo-house legislature based on the population of different states. The first branch was the legislature whose main role was to make laws. The executive was the second branch mandated to enforce all the laws.
Lastly, the judiciary was to interpret laws formulated by the legislature. Counting and representation of slaves was covered by The 3/5th Compromise. The number of slaves from southern states was higher compared to northern states. This led to a controversy in which the two different regions had varying ideas regarding representation and taxation. Many southerners wanted all slaves to be counted normally as part of the nation’s population but be excluded from taxation.
Contrary to this, northern people argued that slaves were to be counted for taxation but not for representation. It is worth noting that The Great Compromise was a reflection of a representative government through equal representation of every state. Before the nation realized these fundamental changes, the U.S system was considered weak and unfair since all states were equally represented regardless of their sizes and population. All states had equal powers leading to leadership weaknesses and struggles (Henschen & Sidlow, 2008). The Great Compromise is still viewed as a mega achievement during the entire process of shaping the U.S constitution throughout history.
