The Virginia Plan

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This United States Constitution was really the second constitution the United States ever had. The first one being The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. It was created by the Second Continental Congress beginning in 1776, all 13 states had ratified it near the beginning of 1781. America fresh off independence from Britain wanted to greatly limit the powers of government and make sure it never became anything similar to Britain’s rule. Because of this the Articles of Confederation gave the government very limited power. As the years went by Congress and other political powers began to realize the system of government was not capable of making this nation the way they wanted it to be. No one took their currency seriously and the government lacked the power to enforce much of anything. The main problem of the Articles of Confederation according to George Washington was “no money.” States never paid all of their taxes and sometimes …show more content…

This convention's purpose was to revise the constitution and make the federal constitution satisfactory for the needs of a successful government. Two plans for structuring the government arose at the beginning of the convention. The Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan was proposed by Virginian delegates for a bicameral legislative branch. James Madison worked on bettering the document while he waited for the Constitutional convention of 1787. The Virginia Plan set forth the idea of population-weighted representation in the proposed national legislature. One of the big debates to get passed was how to value a state's legislative power. In the articles of confederation each state had one vote in a unicameral legislature. This seemed to be unfair because some states had much larger populations yet had the same

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