Virginia Plan in the context of "Apportionment (politics)"

James Madison (March 16, 1751 [O.S. March 5, 1750] – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison was popularly acclaimed as the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.

Madison was born into a prominent slave-owning planter family in Virginia. In 1774, strongly opposed to British taxation, Madison joined with the Patriots. He was a member of both the Virginia House of Delegates and the Continental Congress during and after the American Revolutionary War. Dissatisfied with the weak national government established by the Articles of Confederation, he helped organize the Constitutional Convention, which produced a new constitution designed to strengthen republican government against democratic assembly. Madison's Virginia Plan was the basis for the convention's deliberations. He became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify the Constitution and joined Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing The Federalist Papers, a series of pro-ratification essays that remain prominent among works of political science in American history.

The United States Constitution has served as the supreme law of the United States since taking effect in 1789. The document was written at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention and was ratified through a series of state conventions held in 1787 and 1788. Since 1789, the Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; particularly important amendments include the ten amendments of the United States Bill of Rights, the three Reconstruction Amendments, and the Nineteenth Amendment.

The Constitution grew out of efforts to reform the Articles of Confederation, an earlier constitution which provided for a loose alliance of states with a weak central government. From May 1787 through September 1787, delegates from twelve of the thirteen states convened in Philadelphia, where they wrote a new constitution. Two alternative plans were developed at the convention. The nationalist majority, soon to be called "Federalists", put forth the Virginia Plan, a consolidated government based on proportional representation among the states by population. The "old patriots", later called "Anti-Federalists", advocated the New Jersey Plan, a purely federal proposal, based on providing each state with equal representation. The Connecticut Compromise allowed for both plans to work together. Other controversies developed regarding slavery and a Bill of Rights in the original document.

James Madison (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was a Founding Father and the 4th president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. He is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. Disillusioned by the weak national government established by the Articles of Confederation, he helped organize the Constitutional Convention, which produced a new constitution. Madison's Virginia Plan served as the basis for the Constitutional Convention's deliberations, and he was one of the most influential individuals at the convention. He became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify the Constitution, and he joined with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing The Federalist Papers, a series of pro-ratification essays that was one of the most influential works of political science in American history.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

The New Jersey Plan (also known as the Small State Plan or the Paterson Plan) was a proposal for the structure of the United States government presented during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Principally authored by William Paterson of New Jersey, the New Jersey Plan was an important alternative to the Virginia Plan proposed by James Madison and Edmund Randolph of Virginia.

The less populous states were strongly opposed to the bicameralism and proportional apportionment of Congress by population called for in the Virginia Plan. Less populous states were concerned that the Virginia Plan would give substantial control of the national government to the more populous states. In response, the less populous states proposed an alternative plan that would have retained the one-vote-per-state representation under one legislative body from the Articles of Confederation. Following the defeat of the New Jersey Plan, Paterson and Madison's proposals were reconciled through the Connecticut Compromise, which combined elements of each to create the current structure of Congress today—a Senate in which states are provided equal representation regardless of population, and a House of Representatives in which representatives are apportioned based on population.