Posted on 11/17/2014 6:46:56 AM PST by cotton1706
Congrats on your book.
But wasn’t the great compromise what gave birth to the present Senate. It gave greater power to the small states by giving them equal weight in the senate with the larger states...otoh the large states won out in the house, getting a representation according to their population?
You know I tried to see if a representative Senate would have stopped the South from stopping anti-slavery legislation but I never could get the best data on that...like the votes and such. Whats your opinion on that?
Thanks for the conversation ....I’ll send you my address for your book.
“But wasn’t the great compromise what gave birth to the present Senate. It gave greater power to the small states by giving them equal weight in the senate with the larger states...otoh the large states won out in the house, getting a representation according to their population?”
Yes, on this you are correct, but there were always going to be two legislative bodies and one body was always going to be a much smaller than the other. The founders were used to this. Every colony had a more numerous lower house or Assembly, and a small upper house or Council (this body usually counseled the governor). And frequently the lower house elected the upper house, with the approval of the governor (usually a royal governor appointed by the king).
“You know I tried to see if a representative Senate would have stopped the South from stopping anti-slavery legislation but I never could get the best data on that...like the votes and such. Whats your opinion on that?”
Frankly I don’t think it would have, because power at the time was weighed exactly the opposite. The House, the representative body, was more populated with pro-slavery forces. They had the Gag Rule for a while and John Quincy Adams was only able to get rid of that by being determined and vigilant and striking when nobody was paying attention.
Great! I think you’ll enjoy the book. It’s a very quick read, but very informative.
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