Sherman's great compromise: Roger Sherman's brilliant proposal saved the 1787 Constitutional Convention from a hopeless deadlock and safeguarded against centralization of power at the federal level.

The stifling early summer heat in Philadelphia seemed apropos for the increasingly heated debate among the Constitutional Convention delegates. By early June 1787, the convention appeared hopelessly deadlocked. Delegates from the larger states wanted the new Constitution to apportion congressional representation by population, while those from the smaller states wanted to continue congressional representation by states as under the Articles of Confederation.

Virginia's James Madison and New York's Gouverneur Morris led the argument for representation by population. Madison called pure representation of the states "unjust" and "did not conceive any effectual system could be substituted on any other basis than that of a proportional suffrage."

Delegates from the smaller states countered that their states "may be injured at pleasure without redress," in the words of Delaware's Gunning Bedford Jr. "In this case Delaware would have about one-ninetieth for its share in the general councils; whilst Pennsylvania and Virginia would possess one-third of the whole," Bedford pointed out. "Is there no difference of interests, no rival ship of commerce, of manufactures? Will not these large States crush the small ones, whenever they stand in the way of their ambitious or interested views? This shows the impossibility of adopting such a system as that on the table, or any other founded on a change in the principle of representation."

More than any other issue, the great debate as to how to apportion representation in Congress threatened to break apart the Convention before it could produce a new Constitution.

On Monday, June 11. Roger Sherman, Connecticut's senior delegate, proposed a compromise that, he hoped, would protect the smaller states while giving representation to each man. He proposed a bicameral legislature where "the proportion of suffrage in the first branch [the House of Representatives] 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."

Before Sherman had submitted his proposal, Benjamin Franklin had written a letter warning against hot-headed debate about congressional representation. After the proposal was submitted, Franklin asked that James Wilson read his letter, which stated: "[T]ill this point, the proportion of representation, came before us, our debates were carried on with great coolness and temper. If any thing of a contrary kind has on this occasion appeared, I hope it will not be repeated; for we are sent here to consult, not to contend, with each other; and declarations of a fixed opinion, and of determined resolution never to change it, neither enlighten nor convince us."

Not surprisingly, Sherman's proposal, which became known as the "Connecticut Compromise," or the Great Compromise, was met with a flurry of spirited and tense debate. "Everything," Sherman warned the delegates in his stunted style, "depended on this. The smaller states would never agree to the plan on any other principle than an equality of suffrage in this branch."

The 66-year-old Sherman was an old hand at the workings of Congress. He had logged in more time as a congressman than any other man, serving from the first Continental Congress in 1774 every year through 1784, except for 1782. In 1776, when the Continental Congress was drawing up the Articles of Confederation, Sherman had suggested a similar arrangement. But the Continental Congress of 1776 was then more interested in promoting independence for the states that had broken away from Great Britain than in forming a strong union among those states. Perhaps no man was more aware of the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation, and more convinced of the need for a stronger union, than Sherman. "The question is, not what rights naturally belong to man," he told the delegates, "but how they may be most equally and effectually guarded in society. And, if some give up more than others, in order to obtain this end, there can be no room for complaint."

Sherman's Path to Greatness

Some men find their path to greatness by defending their country on the battlefield, while others achieve greatness through their rhetorical persuasiveness or literary brilliance. Sherman's greatest renown was not founded in these but in his steadfast character. He never commanded men in the field of battle, and he had no public speaking skills whatsoever. In fact, when he arrived in Philadelphia for the first Continental Congress in 1774, John Adams sized Sherman up this way: "He is between 50 and 60 years old, solid and sensible." Adams added that "Sherman's air is the reverse of grace; there cannot be a more striking contrast to beautiful action, than the motions of his hands.... But he has a clear head and sound judgment."

John Adams noted that he eventually came to believe Sherman was "as solid as Mount Atlas" in the cause of independence--a very high compliment indeed, coming as it did from such a stalwart patriot. Sherman was an early defender of the rights of man, writing to Thomas Cushing on April 30, 1772: "It is a fundamental principle in the British Constitution and I think it must be in every free state, that no laws bind the people but such as they consent to be governed by, therefore so far as the people of the colonies are bound by laws made without their consent, they must be in a state of slavery or absolute subjugation to the will of others: If this right belongs to the people of the colonies, why should they not claim and enjoy it?" Sherman eventually became one of the five men on the committee charged with producing the Declaration of Independence.

Sherman's literary skills, though capable, were modest compared to those of Thomas Jefferson (who wrote the Declaration) and fellow convention delegates James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Sherman had authored a tract against inflation back in 1752, and he had even published an Almanac in Connecticut from 1750 through 1761. But Sherman, who did not come from a wealthy background, lacked the advantages of education that Madison and Jefferson had.

Sherman lived a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" life, and learned through the school of hard knocks. Two years after being born in Newton, Massachusetts, his father settled his family in the colony's rural town of Stoughton. His family was poor; they farmed and earned a little extra money to help make ends meet by making shoes in the evening. Sherman took on the cobbler trade after receiving a rudimentary education from the local Harvard-educated minister, Rev. Samuel Dunbar. Though he never received a formal college education, early in life Sherman developed a lifelong love for learning. "His leisure time, he devoted to study," historian William Jackman recorded. "Insatiable book-hunger consumed him. He burned the midnight oil constantly and had an open book in front of him while pegging and sowing boots."

Sherman's father died when Roger was 19, after which Roger managed the care of his mother and the education of his younger brothers and sisters. Two years later, in 1743, he set out for New Milford, Connecticut, where his older brother had settled. Sherman served as a cobbler in New Milford until he opened a general store in partnership with his brother. In 1745, Sherman was appointed county surveyor, and his business continued to thrive after the death of his brother. After a lawyer-friend told him, "My friend, you should fit yourself to be a lawyer," Sherman engaged in a personal study of the law. He was admitted to the bar in 1754, despite his lack of a college degree.

By 1759, Sherman was appointed a judge in Litchfield County, and served as a judge in different districts over the next several decades. He moved to New Haven in 1761, where he opened a bookstore next to Yale College and eventually became treasurer of the college. He was soon nominated to the colonial legislature, representing his new hometown. After New Haven became a city in 1784, Sherman served as its first mayor. When the Constitutional Convention was called in 1787, Connecticut had no one more experienced and capable to send than Roger Sherman.

Compromise Fails at First

Sherman lost his first bid for a compromise at the Constitutional Convention in a close 6-5 vote on June 11. But the issue was hardly settled. Delaware's delegates announced they would leave the convention if states were not given equal representation, and the impasse continued to fester.

The Constitutional Convention blundered along without any resolution for two more weeks, and Benjamin Franklin remarked on June 28 that the convention appeared "divided by our little partial local interests." Franklin noted, "The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other--our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ayes--is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding.... In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us." With the Constitutional Convention appearing to be on the verge of break-up over this issue, Franklin issued a call for the assembly to engage in daily prayer:

   In the beginning of the contest with
   Great Britain, when we were sensible
   of danger, we had daily
   prayer in this room for the divine
   protection. Our prayers, Sir, were
   heard, and they were graciously
   answered. All of us who were engaged
   in the struggle must have
   observed frequent instances of a
   superintending Providence in our
   favor. To that kind Providence we
   owe this happy opportunity of
   consulting in peace on the means
   of establishing our future national
   felicity. And have we now forgotten
   that powerful Friend? Or
   do we imagine that we no longer
   need his assistance? I have lived,
   Sir, a long time, and the longer I
   live, the more convincing proofs
   I see of this truth--that God
   governs in the affairs of men.
   And if a sparrow cannot fall to
   the ground without his notice, is
   it probable that an empire can
   rise without his aid? We have
   been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings,
   that "except the Lord build the
   house they labor in vain that build it."
   I firmly believe this; and I also believe
   that without his concurring aid we
   shall succeed in this political building
   no better than the builders of Babel.

Sherman seconded Franklin's motion, and the convention adopted the resolution.

Providence often uses men as instruments, and in this case the principal instrument was Sherman. The Connecticut delegate had already contributed many years of effort to the patriotic cause--as a judge, state legislator, congressman and signer of the Declaration of Independence--but this was his highest hour. His lack of verbal eloquence no longer mattered; the delegates knew him to be a man of substance and principle, and they were moved not by his charisma but by the force of his unquestionable sincerity and conviction. "He is awkward, unmeaning and unaccountably strange in his manner," William Pierce of Georgia wrote of Sherman, confirming Adams' apt description of the Connecticut Puritan. "The oddity of his address, the vulgarisms that accompany his public speaking ... make everything that is connected with him grotesque and laughable. And yet he deserves infinite praise. He is an able politician and extremely artful in accomplishing any particular object. It is remarked that he seldom fails." According to James Madison's copious notes of the convention proceedings, Sherman spoke some 138 times. Only Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson and Madison himself spoke more often.

On July 14, Madison recorded that Sherman again "urged the equality of votes [in the Senate], not so much as a security for the small States, as for the State Governments which could not be preserved unless they were represented, and had a negative in the General Government." Though advocates of the "Connecticut Compromise" had lost the vote of New York (whose delegates had temporarily left the convention), North Carolina switched to approve the compromise, and Massachusetts no longer opposed the compromise, because of its delegates having become evenly divided. The following Monday, July 16, the convention adopted Sherman's "Connecticut Compromise" by a narrow 5-4 vote.

The result is history. The Constitution created two houses of Congress: one, the House of Representatives, representing the people; and the other, the Senate, representing the states. In The Federalist, No. 62, James Madison clearly and concisely explained the value of this bicameral approach: "[T]he equal vote allowed to each State [two senators per state] is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty.... Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people [the House of Representatives], and then of a majority of the States [the Senate]."

Sherman served two years in each of the legislative bodies he helped to create. He was elected to serve in the House of Representatives in the first Congress, which convened in 1789. Connecticut's legislature sent him to the Senate in 1791, where he served until his death in 1793.

For many years the Senate generally guarded the interests and rights of the states. It also, as intended, proved to be more temperate and cautious than the House--which was more influenced by the popular passions of the day--and became known as "the greatest deliberative body on earth."

Unfortunately, the value of the Senate as a check on the House was greatly weakened when the 17th Amendment was adopted. That amendment, requiring that senators be elected by popular vote, greased the skids for the erosion of states' rights that has followed.

A restoration of our republic, and of America's greatness, will be greatly aided by getting back to the wisdom and political insights of one of our nation's greatest--and almost forgotten--founders. And that surely includes repealing the 17th Amendment, so that senators will once again represent their states--just as Roger Sherman had intended.