May 14, 1787:

In an attempt to avoid the tyranny from which they had just escaped, the delegates of young America created a constitution called the Articles of Confederation that gave the states nearly all the power, while only granting the national government the ability to defend the states. With no power to tax or regulate trade within or between states, and with each state having their own currency, the Articles produced a myriad of issues. 

These issues were mainly economic, as well as an inability to protect the states and the citizens as demonstrated through the rebellions of debtors in Shays’ Rebellion. As eight hundred armed debtors rebelled against the courts, the states requested help from the national government, but with no power to collect taxes and raise an army, the national government could not protect the states or their citizens from the angry debtors, causing the deaths of four innocent civilians.

Clearly the delegates needed to create a new government in which more power was centralized in a federal government. That is why, eleven years after signing and adopting the Declaration of Independence, the delegates of young America were back in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to revise the Articles. This Constitutional Convention began on May 14, 1787.

Although the initial purpose of the convention was simply to revise the Articles of Confederation, the delegates quickly realized that the issues with the Articles could not be solved by any number of amendments; they needed to draft a new constitution.

May 29, 1787:

One of the easiest decisions made in the convention was that this new government would need a Congress composed of more than just 13 delegates, each having one vote on behalf of his state. This expansion of the legislative branch brought about the issue of representation. States with larger populations, namely Virginia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, wanted their representation in this new Congress to be proportionate to their population. 

On May 29, 1787, Edmund Randolph, former governor of Virginia, proposed the Virginia Plan. The Virginia Plan had three main requests: three branches of government, a bicameral— two chambered— federal legislature, and that representation in both of those chambers be apportioned based on population. The first two requests were accepted by the delegates and incorporated into the new constitution, but delegates from the states with small populations refused to agree to the third request. Without these states’ support, the new constitution would not be ratified, leaving the Constitutional Convention at a standstill. 

May 30 to June 13, 1787:

For two weeks, the larger states’ delegates tried to convince the smaller states’ delegates to agree to the Virginia Plan, but they refused as long as they were not guaranteed equal representation in Congress.

June 15, 1787:

Unwilling to surrender, the delegates of the smaller states devised their own plan. The New Jersey Plan was proposed by William Paterson, former governor of New Jersey, on June 15, 1787. It called for the creation of a Supreme Court, the right of the federal government to tax imports and regulate trade, and, of course, equal representation of all the states in Congress. 

With two definitive and opposite plans, and neither side willing to give in, the Constitutional Convention came to a halt as the debate over Congressional Representation divided the delegates.

July 5, 1787:

When it seemed like there was no solution, after three weeks of debating over which plan to accept, Roger Sherman of Connecticut stepped in with a proposition of his own: the Connecticut Compromise. The compromise called for a bicameral legislature with two houses: the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the House of Representatives, the lower house, representation would be population-based. At the time, the House of Representatives was the only aspect of the government for which citizens directly voted. Then there would be the Senate, the upper house, which would equally represent each state with two Senators that would be appointed by state legislatures. Incredibly, this plan appeased all thirteen states. 

Roger Sherman’s Connecticut Compromise also created a solution for the other biggest issue of the Constitutional Convention— slave representation. Southern states wanted slaves to count toward their representation in Congress, while Northern states thought that was unfair since the Southern states did not consider the slaves as people in any other respect. Roger Sherman’s compromise created the three-fifths compromise, which meant slaves would count as three-fifths of a vote.

Finally, with the creation and acceptance of the Connecticut Compromise, all major disagreements were solved, and the U.S. Constitution was ready to be ratified and adopted as our new government.

Without the Connecticut Compromise, it is likely that the U.S. Constitution would not have been ratified as it would have lacked the support of all of the states. Roger Sherman was not only a Founding Father but one of the most influential and essential people to the creation of the U.S. Constitution and the country that is America.