The Convention's compromises

Example 1

1. Ask what was disputed. This is about how the states are represented in Congress: by population, or equally.
2. Ask who wanted what. The large states wanted seats by population in both houses (the Virginia Plan). The small states wanted one vote per state (the New Jersey Plan).
3. Each side got its rule, but in a different house: the House by population, the Senate equal. That bargain, accepted on July 16, 1787, is the Great Compromise, also called the Connecticut Compromise.
4. It is not the Three-Fifths Clause. That clause was about who was counted for House seats, not about having two houses with two rules.

Answer: The Great Compromise

Example 2

1. Ask what was disputed. Crops sold abroad are exports, and shipping laws are navigation acts. Both are about trade, which is also called commerce.
2. Ask who wanted what. The South, which lived by selling tobacco, rice and indigo abroad, wanted no taxes on exports. The North, with its merchants and shipbuilders, wanted shipping laws by a simple majority, not two-thirds.
3. The South won the ban on export taxes; the North won the simple majority. That is the commerce compromise.
4. It was tied to the slave trade clause: New England delegates voted to protect the slave trade until 1808, and South Carolina and Georgia let go of the two-thirds rule.

Answer: The commerce compromise