we know our system of government so well

that it hardly bears thinking about.

We know that there's a president

who's the head of the Executive Branch,

there's Congress, which is made up

of the House of Representatives and the Senate,

and there's the judicial branch, which has the Supreme Court

as its head of a whole court system

that stretches throughout the United States.

But how did the United States end up with this system?

We frequently forget that the Constitutional Convention

which created this system we know today happened in 1787.

That was more than a decade

after the Declaration of Independence.

So there was this 11-year plus period

before the United States had its modern day constitution

and during that time, fought the Revolutionary War,

won in 1783,

and tried out a completely different system of government

called the Articles of Confederation,

which we talked a little bit more about in another video.

Now the Articles of Confederation

had a very strong sense of limited government.

In fact, you could think of the Articles of Confederation

as being a little bit more

like a loose confederation of states,

where each state had one vote in the legislative branch,

the branch that makes laws,

and they had to really agree on most things,

nine out of 13 for most legislation

and unanimous agreement

for any kind of amendments to this system.

And I think it's clear why the founders

first went with this system of limited government

because they had just revolted against a monarchy.

They thought of the states as being

in what they call just kind of a league of friendship,

can almost see it as being similar

to the European Union today,

independent nations who do some things together

for foreign policy reasons and economic reasons.

Now by the late 1780s, it was becoming clear

that the Articles of Confederation were not working.

With such a weak central government,

it was really hard to get things done.

They couldn't raise taxes.

They couldn't raise a military.

Some states were even putting taxes

on the goods of other states.

So in 1787, delegates from 12 of the 13 states,

Rhode Island did not participate because Rhode Island

was not a big fan of central government,

came together in Philadelphia,

in the same place where they had signed

the Declaration of Independence,

to think about how to revise the Articles of Confederation.

And some very notable figures were there.

George Washington is one of them.

See Ben Franklin over here,

and James Madison.

Although some people that you might have expected

to be at the Constitutional Convention were not,

namely, Thomas Jefferson

and John Adams

who were out of the country being diplomats at the time.

So the delegates at the Constitutional Convention

have a pretty difficult problem to solve.

They want to have a stronger central government,

one that can get things done,

make sure the states play well together,

raise armies, raise taxes,

but they don't want a central government that is too strong

because they just escaped from monarchy.

They don't wanna recreate monarchy in the United States.

So they're looking for a very delicate balance

of a government strong enough to get things done

but not so strong as to promote tyranny.

Now even though the delegates were supposed to be revising

the Articles of Confederation,

some people had, in secret,

been considering completely throwing out

the Articles of Confederation and starting anew.

But one of the biggest hurdles they had to solve

was what would a new sort of legislature look like.

So the Virginia delegates

suggested a plan for the legislature,

it's the law-making body,

that would be bicameral,

means two room or two house

from bi, meaning two,

and camera, Latin for room.

And their idea was that there would be a lower house,

similar to the House of Commons in English Parliament,

that would be directly elected

as individuals would vote for the representatives

but the number of representatives that each state would get

would be decided by their population.

Now Virginia was the largest state by population by far

and so, this plan would have worked out

pretty well for them because they would have gotten

the largest proportion of representatives.

Small states like Delaware, and Georgia, Rhode Island,

would have very few representatives indeed, comparatively.

They also wanted to have an upper house,

similar to the House of Lords in the British Parliament,

which would be appointed

by state legislatures.

But just like the lower house,

the number representatives

would also be determined by population.

Now as you can imagine, the small sates

were not big fans of having representation

based just on population,

so they came back with a different plan.

This was called the New Jersey Plan.

So the little states said, "All right, the Virginia Plan

"gives way too much power to the big states.

"We want an equal voice in legislation."

So the New Jersey Plan,

much like the Articles of Confederation,

gave one vote

to each of the states

so that the small states

would have the same representation in Congress

as the large states

and their plan was for a single chamber

or unicameral legislature.

So this really wasn't much different

from the Articles of Confederation at all.

So how did the delegates resolve this issue

of how to balance the voices of large states

with large populations

with small states that had small populations?

Because in a situation where all states

have an equal number of votes,

like in the New Jersey Plan,

the 60,000 residents of Delaware

could have as much say

as the almost 700,000 residents of Virginia.

Meaning that the people who live in Delaware

were in fact more powerful.

But at the same time, you wouldn't want it

so that people living in the larger states

could get their way all the time.

What if the people in Delaware

had a very legitimate concern

that those in Virginia didn't share?

It would be impossible

to get all of these states to agree, to amend,

or replace the Articles of Confederation

if some of them felt like their interests

aren't being taken into account at all.

So to solve this issue of how to weight

the representation of the states,

the delegates came up

with what's called the Great Compromise

or sometimes the Connecticut Compromise.

And in a way, what they did was combine these two plans.

They made a legislative branch

that was bicameral, two house,

with a lower and an upper house

and this lower house become the House of Representatives,

where each state would have representatives

in proportion to their population.

So states that have large populations

have more representatives.

States with small populations have fewer representatives.

And those representatives

would be directly elected by the people.

Now, and this time,

the people was a fairly small proportion

to vote in 1790s.

You had to be a white man

with fairly significant property,

so it wasn't full suffrage.

It wasn't event full suffrage for white men,

but these folks were elected by vote.

And then this upper house would be the Senate.

And in the Senate, each state would have two senators,

regardless of their size,

so that as legislation moved through Congress,

first from the lower house, where it would be approved

and if approved, sent to the upper house,

there, all states would have an equal voice

in whether legislation was passed.

And in this upper house,

the senators would not be directly elected

but rather appointed

by state legislatures.

And in fact, senators were appointed into the 20th century.

Now the Great Compromise wasn't the only compromise made

at the Constitutional Convention.

They made a number more

and we'll talk more about those

and about the other two branches of the government

in the next video.