It’s the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia. The heat is thick enough to chew. A group of men are locked in a room with the windows shut tight—partly for secrecy, partly to keep the flies out—and they are absolutely losing it on each other. You probably learned about the Constitutional Convention in middle school as some polite gathering of geniuses in powdered wigs. It wasn't. It was a messy, high-stakes brawl about power. And at the center of that brawl was a single, terrifying question: Why did the small states object to the Virginia Plan?
If you were sitting in that room representing Delaware or New Jersey, the Virginia Plan looked less like a roadmap for a new nation and more like a death warrant for your political relevance. Honestly, it's easy to see why. The plan, mostly cooked up by James Madison and presented by Edmund Randolph, wanted to scrap the old system entirely and replace it with a national government where representation was based on population.
If you had a lot of people, you had a lot of votes. If you didn't? You were basically just an observer in your own country.
The Big State Takeover
The Virginia Plan wasn't some subtle shift in policy. It was a radical pivot. Under the previous Articles of Confederation, every state got one vote. Simple. Fair—at least if you were small. But Madison, a "Big State" guy from Virginia, argued that this was ridiculous. He felt that 50,000 people in Delaware shouldn't have the same say as 700,000 people in Virginia.
To the delegates from the smaller states, like William Paterson of New Jersey or Gunning Bedford Jr. of Delaware, this felt like a hostile takeover. They realized that under the Virginia Plan, a handful of large states—Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts—could effectively run the entire country. They could outvote the smaller states on taxes, trade, and western expansion.
Bedford didn't mince words. He famously snapped at the large-state delegates, basically telling them that the small states would find a foreign ally to protect them if the big states tried to crush them. That's how heated this got. We're talking about the potential collapse of the United States before it even really started.
A Three-Headed Monster
The objection wasn't just about the number of seats in a room. It was about the structure of the proposed government. The Virginia Plan called for a bicameral (two-house) legislature. In the first house, members would be elected by the people. In the second house, members would be elected by the first house.
Wait, it gets worse for the small guys.
The plan also proposed a national executive (a president, essentially) and a national judiciary, both chosen by that legislature. If the big states controlled the legislature because they had more people, they would also control who became president and who sat on the supreme court. It was a total sweep. Small states feared they would become "vassals" to their larger neighbors.
The Fear of "Consolidation"
One word kept popping up in the debates: "Consolidation."
Smaller states were terrified that the Virginia Plan would erase state lines in all but name. They viewed the United States not as a single mass of people, but as a confederation of sovereign entities. If the national government could reach directly into a state and tax its citizens or override its laws—which the Virginia Plan allowed—the state governments would eventually wither away and die.
Connecticut’s Roger Sherman was particularly vocal here. He wasn't just being difficult; he was protecting a specific way of life. Small states often had different economic interests than big ones. A trade policy that helped Virginia’s tobacco exports might be devastating for a small merchant-heavy state. Without an equal vote, they had no "veto" over policies that could bankrupt them.
The New Jersey Plan: The Angry Rebuttal
The pushback eventually coalesced into the New Jersey Plan. William Paterson introduced it as a "purely federal" alternative. It was basically a "fix" for the Articles of Confederation rather than a total rewrite. It kept the one-state, one-vote rule.
The debate between these two plans was brutal. It lasted for weeks. Madison and Alexander Hamilton (the big-state champions) argued that the New Jersey Plan would keep the country weak and disorganized. Paterson and his allies argued that the Virginia Plan was a "tyranny of the majority."
The Great Compromise (And Why It Almost Failed)
So, how did we get out of this? Most people know about the Connecticut Compromise, or the Great Compromise. Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth suggested a middle ground:
- One house (the House of Representatives) based on population.
- One house (the Senate) where every state gets two votes, regardless of size.
This sounds like a no-brainer now, but at the time, the big states hated it. Madison thought it was a betrayal of democratic principles. He felt that giving a small state the same power as a large state in the Senate was fundamentally unfair to the individual citizens living in those large states.
The vote for the compromise was razor-thin. It actually failed the first time it was brought up in a slightly different form. It only passed because a few delegates changed their minds at the last second, realizing that if they didn't find a middle ground, the convention would break up, the states would go their separate ways, and the "American experiment" would end right there in the Philadelphia humidity.
What We Get Wrong About the Small State Objection
A lot of people think the small states were just being selfish or stubborn. But if you look at the historical context, they were actually defending the original intent of the American Revolution.
The Revolution was fought against a distant, centralized power (London) that didn't listen to local concerns. To men like Paterson, the Virginia Plan looked like a new version of London—just located in Philadelphia or Richmond instead of across the Atlantic. They weren't just fighting for "votes"; they were fighting for the idea that local communities should have a meaningful say in how they are governed.
Also, it’s a misconception that "small" meant "poor" or "underdeveloped." Some of the smaller states were quite wealthy or strategically important due to their ports. Their objection wasn't born out of weakness, but out of a desire to maintain the leverage they already held under the Articles of Confederation.
The Nuance of Slavery in the Debate
We can't talk about the Virginia Plan without mentioning the dark reality of the Three-Fifths Compromise. The small states' objection to the Virginia Plan was inextricably linked to how population was counted.
Southern states (some of which were large, like Virginia) wanted to count enslaved people toward their population to get more seats in the House, even though they refused to grant those people any rights. Some smaller Northern states objected to this, not necessarily because they were all abolitionists (though some were), but because it gave the South an "unfair" boost in power.
This added a whole other layer of complexity. Sometimes "small" states and "large" states swapped sides depending on whether they were talking about taxes, trade, or the counting of human beings as property. It was a shifting mosaic of alliances.
Why This Still Matters in 2026
The echoes of this 1787 fight are still ringing today. Every time someone complains about the Electoral College or the fact that Wyoming has the same number of Senators as California, they are essentially re-litigating the objection to the Virginia Plan.
The small states won that battle. They secured the Senate. They secured the Electoral College (which is based on the total number of Representatives and Senators). Because they stood their ground and refused to sign onto Madison’s original vision, the United States became a "compound republic"—part national, part federal.
Without that stubborn objection, the U.S. might have been a much more centralized, unified country, but it also might have collapsed into civil war decades earlier, or never formed at all.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs and Students
If you're studying this or just curious about how power works, here are a few things to keep in mind:
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- Look at the "Why," not just the "What": The small states weren't just against the Virginia Plan; they were for a specific type of decentralized government.
- Analyze the Senate: Next time you see a bill pass or fail in the Senate, remember that this body exists specifically because of the 1787 standoff. It is the "Small State" victory room.
- Read the Primary Sources: Don't just take a textbook's word for it. Look up the Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 by James Madison. You'll see the actual arguments, the insults, and the desperation.
- Trace the Power: Follow how "population-based representation" affects your life today—from federal funding for highways to the way political campaigns are run.
The objection to the Virginia Plan wasn't just a footnote in history. It was the moment the United States decided to be a collection of states rather than just one giant, undifferentiated mass of people. It’s why your state has its own laws, its own identity, and its own two seats in the Senate, no matter how many or how few people live there.
Next Steps for Deepening Your Knowledge
To truly grasp the tension of the 1787 convention, your next move should be to compare the specific powers granted to the states versus the federal government in the final version of the Constitution. Focus on Article I, Section 8, and the Tenth Amendment. This shows you exactly where the "Small State" influence left its permanent mark on the legal fabric of the country.