Great Compromise
This was an agreement between the larger states, like New York and Pennsylvania, and the smaller states, like Connecticut and Delaware. It set up the House of Representatives that we have now. It stated that each state would have two representatives in this part of the government to create a balance between all the states. That way each state had the same amount of "power" in the government. Before this compromise was made, larger states had more representatives in the government than smaller states. The smaller states were angry with this since they could not get there vote because there were so few of them. This compromise gave the smaller states an equal fighting chance since the number of representatives for each state would be the same.
 |
| Roger Sherman proposed the Great Compromise. |
Three-Fifths Compromise
This was an agreement between the southern states and the northern states over how the slave population would be counted for state populations.The delegates who were against slavery wanted only the free people to be counted, while delegates who favored slavery wanted to include slaves in the population count to get more power in the government. The result of this dispute was the Three-Fifths Compromise which would only count three-fifths of the slave population in the states.
 |
| James Wilson and Roger Sherman proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise. |
