Congress Has Two Chambers Because Big and Small States Both Refused to Lose

The reason Congress has two chambers is that neither side in Philadelphia in 1787 would accept losing.

The big states, led by Virginia and Pennsylvania, wanted representation based on population. More people meant more votes in the legislature. The small states feared they would always be outvoted and lose their equal standing.

New Jersey delegate William Paterson, a former state attorney general, gave the small state case its sharpest edge. He argued that states entering a confederacy stayed sovereign, and sovereigns had to meet as equals. He said, "If we are to be considered as a nation, all state distinctions must be abolished," but as long as states remained sovereign, they had to vote as equals. New Jersey, he warned, would never agree to a population plan because the large states would overwhelm it. "I would rather submit to a monarch, to a despot, than to such a fate," he said.

James Wilson of Pennsylvania countered that joining a national government necessarily meant giving up some of that equal sovereignty, the way a person gives up some natural freedom on entering civil society. The deadlock ran from June 9 to July 16.

Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman offered a way out as early as June 11. He proposed: "The first branch should be according to the respective numbers of free inhabitants, and that in the second branch or Senate, each state should have one vote and no more."

Delegates were not ready to accept it. Sherman repeated the idea on June 20, still without success. Alexander Hamilton had left on June 29 for a short time to handle private business at home. New York delegates Yates and Lansing left on July 10, disgusted by the Virginia Plan.

Then, on July 16, a grand committee created to break the impasse returned to Sherman's formula: a House divided by population with a Senate where states stood equal.

That bargain became the Congress Americans know, a House where population counts and a Senate with two senators per state. Both houses must pass a bill for it to become law.