The Connecticut compromise, approved on July 16, 1787, was a legislative agreement concerning the number of seats and legal representation of the US states in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives.
Explanation:
After the Declaration of Independence of the United States in 1776, a lot of legal issues were to be resolved in order to establish a transparent system of states’ synergy across the country. A large number of states, along with their unfamiliarity made it complicated to decide how exactly the arrangement of their legal representation should work.
Some big states were investing noticeably more financial and manufacturing resources, so they were hoping for a considerable privilege in the Senate. The states that had smaller territories and lower resource reserves, however, were in favor of equal legislative opportunities.
Thus, in July of 1787, delegates from all over the country gathered for the Constitutional Convention, which then became a revolutionary step towards the establishment of the modern US legislative system. The aforementioned convention was supposed to address the issue of internal relations of the states in terms of legal interactions between them.
During the meeting, there was an ongoing debate concerning the division of power between the states. Accordingly, states who were richer and capable of influencing the country’s economy to a greater extent, expected to have more seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Financially weaker states, were then supposed to accept the fact of their minor influence on the US development. It was evident that such an approach to the country’s governance was not efficient, so the state representatives tried to define other ways of power division.
That is when Connecticut’s representatives, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, presented their revolutionary compromise, from which each US state could get a benefit. According to their idea, seats in the House of Representatives must be divided depending upon the state’s population. Speaking of the Senate, the number of state representatives was supposed to be equal regardless of the state territory. In such a way, the dual system of congressional representation in the United States was introduced.
The Connecticut compromise, which is also called the Great compromise, was one of the first and most significant attempts to maintain equal access to the country’s governance. It is also worth mentioning that the future development of the US internal policy was outweighed by only one-voice margin.
At the beginning, the compromise was accepted only on terms that the smaller states could not address any financial issues. The proposition, however, was soon sidetracked and all the US states were entitled to access to the country’s monetary aspects.
The significance of the Connecticut compromise in the context of modern US history can hardly be overestimated. The parliamentary system of the state representation in the US governmental structures, presented today, is taken for granted. However, it was in 1787, when the idea of dual representation was first introduced to the broad public.
The current system of interrelations between the states is considered to be effective in terms of tolerant collaboration, and it also serves as an example for other countries across the globe. Hence, the compromise presented more than two hundred years ago became the guideline for the patterns of legislative collaboration organization across the United States.