What were the big debates between large states and small states at the Constitutional Convention?

0:04[MUSIC] It was going to be a long shot that they were going to be able to achieve this. Part of the reason that they had some degree of success was they were better organized and that they were there first and had something called the Virginia plan ready to go and to set the agenda for the convention. I won't go any further on this because there are reasons why after the first day of the convention when the Convention decides that parliamentary, each state gets one vote.

0:32That was a killer for any plan that was going to successfully move all the way from Confederation to nationhood. Because the small states who wanted to remain in Confederation, were going to be able to block any effort to go all the way so that from the beginning, you've got to give them credit for having the gumption and the courage to attempt to make this change. But that from the beginning of the convention itself, it was predetermined that it could not completely succeed, and there would have to be a series of compromises on that. The small states were jealous of their own state based power. The big states said it was absolutely inconceivable that Delaware would have the same number of votes in the convention

1:19or later in any government as Virginia. Virginia had the largest population. If you want to have a representative government, it must have representation of the population at large. Whereas the small states were anti-federalists in the sense that they wanted the sovereignty to remain in the states. That debate is central. It's a debate from the get go. It's a nationalists against the Confederations. That's the key. The Confederationist, no, they have a lot of support inside the convention because there's more small states than big states.

2:00But they also represent a point of view is the most dominant point of view in the population at large. As the representative from Connecticut put it, states are as about as far as we are prepared to go. Meaning, we can't recognize any authority beyond the borders of our own state. But the only way that this can be resolved is by compromise because Madison's goal, Washington's hopeful goal, Hamilton's goal can't be achieved. You need to get votes from the small states.

2:34So the compromise, it's called the Great Compromise. It's also called the Connecticut Compromise. Says, okay, the House will be by population. The Senate will be by state. From the moment of that compromise, Madison believed the Constitution was failing because once that principle was admitted, you would not move far enough towards a national vision of the government. The government would always have within it a seed of state-based power.

3:09Now, at the time, he's not thinking explicitly on the slavery issue. But it's true that unless you can have a federal government fully empowered to make domestic policy, there's not going to be any way to resolve the slavery issue because the slave states will always be able to block it. But at this point in time, the major point is, when this happened, Washington sent a letter to Hamilton, who was not there. He had gone back to New York to lead a meeting of the New York Manumission Society. He said, get back here quick because everything's falling apart, and I think I wasted my time coming here. This is going nowhere. They interpret the Connecticut Compromise and this notion that the Senate will be by state and the House by

4:03population as a fundamental repudiation of the values they believe need to be inculcated in the Constitution. But it couldn't have passed any other way. [MUSIC]