1.5 Ratification of the U.S. Constitution

Large and small states clashed over how to count each state in Congress.

The Virginia Plan, drafted mainly by James Madison, proposed a two-house legislature with seats in both houses based on population. Large states liked it. The New Jersey Plan, offered by William Paterson, kept a one-house legislature with equal votes for each state. Small states liked it.

Roger Sherman and other Connecticut delegates proposed the Great (Connecticut) Compromise: a bicameral (two-house) Congress with a House of Representatives based on population and a Senate with two members per state. Bills to raise revenue must start in the House, the chamber closest to the people.

• Three-Fifths Compromise: for both House seats and direct taxes, each enslaved person counted as three-fifths of a person. Southern states wanted enslaved people counted fully for representation; northern states didn't want them counted at all. The compromise gave slave states extra House seats and electoral votes.
• Slave trade clause: Congress could not ban the importation of enslaved people before 1808. Congress banned it as soon as it was allowed, effective 1808.
• Fugitive slave clause: people escaping enslavement had to be returned, even from free states.
• The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth (1868) ended the three-fifths rule by counting the whole number of persons in each state.

Delegates rejected both election by Congress (which would weaken the separation of powers) and a direct national popular vote (which some feared and which raised the slavery-counting problem again). The compromise was the Electoral College. Each state gets electors equal to its number of House members plus its two senators, and the electors choose the president. It reflected federalism, distrust of pure democracy and the large-state versus small-state divide.

Amending takes two steps, and each step has two possible methods.

Proposal: two-thirds of both the House and the Senate vote to propose, or two-thirds of state legislatures ask Congress to call a national convention. Every amendment so far has been proposed by Congress.

Ratification: three-fourths of the states approve, either through their legislatures or through special state conventions. With 50 states, that means 38. Only the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed Prohibition, was ratified by state conventions.

Requiring supermajorities at both steps makes change hard but possible, and it gives states a direct role. Congress has sent 33 amendments to the states; 27 have been ratified.

Under Article VII, the Constitution took effect once 9 state conventions approved it. Delaware ratified first, in December 1787, and New Hampshire became the ninth in June 1788. Big states like Virginia and New York ratified narrowly soon after. Anti-Federalists' strongest complaint was the missing bill of rights, and several states ratified while recommending amendments. Madison drafted amendments in the First Congress in 1789, and the first ten, the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791.

The compromises that won ratification left some big questions open, and Americans still argue about them: how much power the national government should have, how much belongs to the states, and how far individual rights reach. Two current examples: after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the national government expanded surveillance, which set off a lasting debate over security versus privacy (3.6); and Americans keep debating what role the national government should play in public schools, which states and local districts mainly run (4.10).