The Great Compromise of 1787 A Congress Created Perhaps the greatest debate undertaken by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 centered on how many representatives each state should have in the new government's lawmaking branch, the U.S. Congress. As is often the case in government and politics, resolving a great debate, required a Great Compromise. Early in the Constitutional Convention, delegates envisioned a Congress consisting of only a single chamber with a certain number of representatives from each state. The burning question was, how many representatives from each state? Delegates from the larger, more populous states favored the Virginia Plan, which called for each state to have a different number of representatives based on the state?s population. Delegates from smaller states supported the New Jersey plan, under which each state would send the same number of representatives to Congress. Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman is credited with proposing the alternative of a "bicameral," or two-chambered Congress, made up of a Senate and a House of Representatives. Each state, suggested Sherman, would send an equal number of representatives to the Senate, and one representative to the House for each 30,000 residents of the state. At the time, all the states except Pennsylvania had bicameral legislatures, so the delegates were familiar with the structure of Congress proposed by Sherman. Sherman?s plan pleased delegates from both the large and small states and became known as the Connecticut Compromise of 1787, or the Great Compromise. The structure and powers of the new U.S.