How the Constitution Came Into Being
The Constitution was formed when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, realizing that the weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation, could not be amended. Instead, James Madison and Edmund Randolph proposed the Virginia Plan. Ideas in this plan included three branches of government, two house congress, a senate where each state had one delegate, and a house, where the larger states had more delegates.
Soon afterward, William Paterson introduced the New Jersey Plan, calling for a single body congress where each state got one vote. The New Jersey Plan was favored by small states that wanted to keep the articles. The Virginia plan was favored by big states and states that wanted a stronger national government. The delegates finally came up with the Great Compromise, in which there was a two-house legislature, where the upper-house Senate had two representatives from each state. The House of Representatives had delegates based on population. The "Founding Fathers" wrote the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention.
The next problem was whether or not to count slaves in the population for the House of Representatives. The North and the South argued over this topic until they came up with a compromise, the Three-Fifths Compromise. With this, three-fifths of the slave population would counted toward representation and taxes.
Nine states had to ratify the Constitution for it to go into effect. The ninth state ratified the Constitution on June 17, 1778. The last state to ratify the Constitution was Rhode Island.