When Benjamin Franklin finally proposed that the Convention adopt the Connecticut idea, that aged philosopher and friend of human liberty was not acting in the interest of the slave-owners.
When Washington gave his consent, he was not guilty of cowardice and unfairness for the purpose of protecting slavery.
These men knew perfectly well that they were exceeding their authority in making a new Constitution. They were sent there to amend the Articles of Confederation; and when New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware took the resolute position which was voiced by Patterson, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, Washington and Franklin both had sense enough to know that it would be utter folly to go before the people, seeking a ratification of a new Constitution, unless the difference between big states and little states had been first adjusted in the Constitutional Convention. Indeed, Rhode Island, another small state, was so jealous of her rights that she refused to send delegates to the Convention.
My authorities are Bancroft’s “History of the United States,” “The Constitutional History” of Landon, McMaster’s “With the Fathers,” Hildreth’s “History of the United States,” Schouler’s “History of the United States.”
The latter historian says expressly that the compromise under discussion “was secured through the determination of the smaller states not to yield entirely the rule of representation which the larger states were bent on invading,” and, he adds, “this compromise admirably preserves the composite character of our system.”
The historian declares that the smaller states expressly committed to the New Jersey plan which sought to retain the sovereignty of the states were New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware.
Hildreth, in his “History of the United States,” takes the same position, and says: “The party of the smaller states, known also as the State Rights Party, included the delegates from Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and a majority of those from Maryland and New York.
“The party of the larger states, or National Party, included not only the delegates from Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, but also those from the two Carolinas and Georgia, states which anticipated a very rapid increase of population.”
(I could quote Woodrow Wilson to the same effect, only Woodrow isn’t worth while.)