Virginia And New Jersey Plan Case Study

1.Describe the Virginia and New Jersey Plans for Government and explain how the Connecticut Compromise (Great Compromise) solved the problem and allowed the Constitution to be agreed upon.

The Virginia plan was a plan for how the national government should be run, and as Virginia was a large state it naturally favored the larger states than the smaller states. The Virginia plan called for a strong national government that was composed of three branches: the legislative, which was split into two houses, number of representatives based on state population, and had the power to select the executive and judiciary branches. The New Jersey plan favored smaller states and would have the government be composed of a one-house legislature with one vote for each state, regardless of population, and giving Congress the power to raise revenue from imports and postal service fees. The judicial branch would be headed by a

Supreme Court with members being appointed by executive officers.
Neither of these plans went through because of a compromise proposed by Connecticut.

This compromise would have the government be made of a two-house legislature. There would be a House of Representatives, which is based population and elected by the people, and a Senate in which representation would equal for each state who were elected by state legislatures. The house would have the power to make all bills for spending and raising money. This compromise eventually had the approval by all of the states in attendance with its balance between the larger states in the House and the smaller states in the Senate.

2. What is the significance of the Articles of Confederation?

The Articles of Confederation are significant because they were our first attempt at setting up a national government in the United States. They are also significant because they show how having too weak of a national government would cause many problems if all of the states were not united by a common goal.

3. What were the primary weaknesses of the Articles of

Confederation?

Some of the primary weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation were that the national government was given the power to coin money, but had nothing to make the money worth anything, and the some of the states even started to coin their own money making it worse. Another weakness was that their was no judicial system, so no conflicts would have a high ruling court to solve problems. The overall biggest weakness of the Articles however was the lack of a strong central government, the national government had no authority or power to do anything that it tried to do. It had to ask states for money because it could not tax, so it could not pay off the war debts, and it did not have authority over the states, so they just did whatever they wanted, and each acted as their own nation basically.

4. Who were the Federalists and AntiFederalists and why did they differ?

The Federalists were the people that favored a strong national government and supported the proposed U.S. Constitution, while the Anti-Federalists were the people that favored stronger state governments, a weak national government, and opposed the proposed U.S. Constitution. Federalists were generally composed of property owners, landed rich, and merchants. They were the people that would benefit more from having a stronger national government and saw themselves as the ones who should govern the country. Anti-Federalists were generally composed of small farmers, shopkeepers, and everyday laborers. These people would benefit by a smaller government that would give them more individual freedom. They saw the elites of the Federalists as corrupt and did not want them to control and dominate common man’s freedoms.