The Heritage Foundation: New Common Sense-- Constitutional Countdown

What can someone accomplish in four months? It’s possible to play an entire NFL football season, but you’d need another full month to complete the playoffs. You could try to build a new home. But you’d need plenty of cooperation from your contractor to get it finished on time.

Or you could try to write, from scratch, the greatest governing document in history.

Well, no point in trying for that last one, since it’s already been done. That’s right. The U.S. Constitution, which has enabled our country’s growth and success for more than 220 years, was written in a mere four months.

The remarkable four months that gave us the Constitution began on May 25, 1787. State delegates gathered to discuss ways to replace the failing Articles of Confederation. The process proceeded in several stages. One scholar on the Constitution Convention Gordon Lloyd divides the summer into a four-act drama.


Act I (May 1787) centers around the Virginia Plan, which was a proposal for a bicameral legislature, with representation based on state populations. The New Jersey Plan, by contrast, proposed a unicameral legislature with equal representation for all states. The smaller states favored the New Jersey plan, because they feared losing their voice to the larger states under the Virginia Plan. Nevertheless, the Act concludes with the adoption of the Virginia Plan and the creation of a bicameral legislature.

In Act II (June and July), the Convention is at a stalemate. Many delegates are concerned that they have exceeded the Congressional mandate to revise the Articles of Confederation and are worried about the possible failure of an extended republic. The Connecticut Compromise (adopted in mid-July) assuages the majority of these fears. The Compromise blends both federal and national characteristics, thus enabling a republic to succeed on a large scale. Under the Connecticut Compromise, we first encounter the form of Congress that we have today: one in which the House represents the individual people, and the Senate represents the states more completely.

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