This Day in History: New Jersey Ratifies the Constitution

On this day in 1787, New Jersey’s state ratification convention begins. It would quickly approve the then-new U.S. Constitution, making New Jersey the third state to join the union.

New Jersey’s quick action is interesting, if only because the state’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention had expressed doubt about the earliest draft of the Constitution.

They definitely were not on board with that idea!

When the Constitutional Convention opened in the summer of 1787, Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia submitted an outline of government for the Convention’s consideration. The plan was drafted by James Madison (also of Virginia) and came to be known as the “Virginia Plan.”

One aspect of that plan provided for population-based representation in Congress, which was a change from how Congress had been operating. Previously, each state had one vote, regardless of its size. Should the country switch to population-based representation instead?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this move was favored by the large states, but not the small.

On the other side of the fence, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention considered the “New Jersey Plan.” This plan was presented by William Paterson of New Jersey soon after Randolph’s introduction of the Virginia Plan. Paterson’s idea protected small states by retaining the concept of “one state, one vote” in Congress.

The Convention was torn between the Virginia and New Jersey visions of Congress. The large and small states simply could not agree, and the disagreement threatened to derail the entire Convention. Indeed, one delegate, Luther Martin, later described the atmosphere at this juncture, stating that the Convention was “on the verge of dissolution, scarce held together by the strength of a hair.”

The division among the delegates was resolved when an agreement was forged between the small states and the large: This agreement is often referred to as the “Great Compromise.”

The compromise created a bicameral Congress that would take ideas from both the Virginia and the New Jersey Plans: The House of Representatives was to be elected based upon the population in a state. Thus, large states would have more congressmen. At the same time, the Senate would retain the “one state, one vote” principle that was so important to the small states. In the Senate, then, a small state like New Jersey would have the same representation as a large state like Virginia.

Naturally, the presidential election plan would follow in the footsteps of this Great Compromise. In the Electoral College, states have the same number of presidential electors as they have Senators and Representatives.  Just as with Congress, a state’s representation in the Electoral College is based partly on population and partly on a “one state, one vote” principle.

New Jersey’s state ratification convention acted quickly, first meeting on December 11 and ratifying the document by December 18.

Its quick action suggests that the Convention’s compromise was remarkably successful. Small states expected that they would be treated fairly in the new government.

Without such confidence, they would have been unlikely to ratify the Constitution at all. It’s surely a point worth remembering as some today debate getting rid of the Electoral College, one of the Constitution’s protections against majority tyranny.

Will these same individuals follow through with their logic and advocate for eliminating the Senate next?

Food for thought for your day.

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Primary Sources :

• 1787 Convention Minutes (State of New Jersey Department of State website)

• Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (2002)

• Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787 (1986 reprint)

• Creating the United States: Convention and Ratification (Library of Congress website)

• Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (2010)