Virginia Plan

The Virginia Plan was a proposal for a new form of federal government presented by the Virginia delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Virginia Plan called for a strong central government divided into separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Most importantly, it proposed a bicameral (two-house) legislature that would allow for representation based on the population of each state. Although favored by the larger states, the Virginia Plan enjoyed little support from the less populous states that stood to have reduced legislative representation under its terms. These states instead supported an alternative proposal called the New Jersey Plan, which called for equal representation for all states regardless of population size. While neither of these plans was ultimately adopted outright, the Virginia Plan introduced many of the key concepts that would eventually come to define the structure of the American federal government as established by the US Constitution.

Background

As the former American colonies fought to secure their independence from Great Britain in the 1770s, the Continental Congress took on the difficult task of establishing a new government for what was about to become the United States of America. Although many Americans were initially wary of forming a central government, the members of Congress largely recognized that the creation of such a body was a clear necessity. Mindful of the states’ desire to maintain individual sovereignty, Congress set out to construct a federal government that could carry out such actions as making war or pursuing treaties with other nations while leaving most governmental power with the states. The culmination of their efforts in this regard was the Articles of Confederation.

The Articles of Confederation was the United States’ first written constitution. First drafted in 1776, the Articles of Confederation called for an American government that consisted of a loose organization of the states to be overseen by a relatively weak central authority. Once adopted on November 15, 1777, the Articles of Confederation established the first federal government and the first formal union among the individual states. After several years of deliberation among the states, the Articles of Confederation officially took effect on March 2, 1781.

Almost immediately, it became evident that the confederation government would not survive for long. The federal government’s limited powers prevented it from being able to carry out important duties like conducting military activities and putting down internal revolts. It also lacked the authority to levy taxes or regulate commerce. As a result, it quickly became necessary to start the process of replacing the confederation government with a new form of government that featured a stronger central authority. To that end, a Constitutional Convention was convened in Philadelphia in May 1787 to lay the groundwork for a new government. At the convention, delegates from each of the states gathered to share ideas and come to a consensus on what form the new government should take and how it should work. Two of the most important and influential proposals put forward at the convention were the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan.

Overview

As the Constitutional Convention commenced, the majority of the state delegates who assembled there likely expected that they would be engineering an overhaul of the existing confederation government. For the delegation from Virginia, however, the goal was actually to create an entirely new government. The Virginian delegation was led by Edmund Jennings Randolph, who was a lawyer and the state’s sitting governor, and James Madison, an emergent political theorist who served in the state legislature and was the youngest person in attendance at the convention. Both men supported the notion of a strong central government that had clear authority over the states. While waiting for the convention to get underway, Madison drafted a proposal for a new form of government. That proposal became known as the Virginia Plan when Randolph later formally presented it to the convention.

The Virginia Plan laid out many of the features that would eventually form the foundation of the American government. First and foremost, it called for the creation of a government composed of separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It also outlined the responsibilities of these branches and established a system of checks and balances meant to prevent any one of the three from becoming too powerful. Most importantly, the Virginia Plan called for the creation of a national legislature to be composed of two separate houses. According to Madison’s design, the members of the lower house were to be elected directly by the people of each state. The upper house, on the other land, would consist of representatives elected by the members of the lower house. Crucially, the number of legislative seats held by a given state would be determined by the size of that state’s population. This meant that states with larger populations would hold more seats in both houses of the national legislature than those with smaller populations.

When delegates at the convention reviewed the Virginia Plan, the notion of filling the national legislature based on population proved to be a particularly contentious detail. While delegates from larger states were quick to support the Virginia Plan, those from smaller states balked at the idea. These delegates instead threw their support behind a rival proposal called the New Jersey Plan. The New Jersey Plan simply called for a strengthening of the existing confederation government and the creation of a new single-house legislative body in which all the states would have an equal number of representatives.

Neither plan was ever adopted outright. Instead, the convention’s delegates arrived at a compromise that incorporated some elements of each. While they favored the Virginia Plan’s three-branch government and bicameral legislature, the delegates decided to split the difference on how each of its houses—to be called the Senate and the House of Representatives—would be filled. Members of both houses would be elected by the people. However, the number of seats each state held in the House would be determined by the population of the state, and all states would occupy an equal number of seats in the Senate. With this merging of the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan, the US Constitution was created and the structure of the new American government was established.

Bibliography

“Articles of Confederation.” History.com, 21 Aug. 2018, www.history.com/topics/early-us/articles-of-confederation. Accessed 11 Sept. 2018.

Butler, Pierce. “Debates within the Constitutional Convention.” Digital History, www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp‗textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=263. Accessed 11 Sept. 2018.

“The Central Features of the Virginia Plan.” Teaching American History, teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/virginia-plan. Accessed 11 Sept. 2018.

“Creating the United States: Convention and Ratification.” Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/convention-and-ratification.html. Accessed 11 Sept. 2018.

Robertson, David Brian. The Original Compromise: What the Constitution’s Framers Were Really Thinking. Oxford UP, 2013.

Tucker, Spencer C., editor. “Articles of Confederation (1777, 1781).” The Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Early American Republic, 1783–1812: A Political, Social, and Military History, vol. 3. ABC-CLIO, 2014, pp. 767–73.

Tucker, Spencer C., editor. “Virginia Plan.” The Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Early American Republic, 1783–1812: A Political, Social, and Military History, vol. 2. ABC-CLIO, 2014, pp. 706–08.

Vile, John R. “The Writing and Ratification of the U.S. Constitution and Its Emergence from a Number of Alternatives.” Re-Framers: 170 Eccentric, Visionary, and Patriotic Proposals to Rewrite the U.S. Constitution. ABC-CLIO, 2014, pp. 13–25.