John Adams writes in his diary, that Mr. Sherman, in Committee
of the Whole, moved August 1, 1776, that the vote be taken
both ways, once according to numbers, and a second time, when
the States should vote as equals.
This was, in substance, so far as the arrangement of political
power was concerned, the plan of the Constitution. In the
Constitutional Convention, Mr. Sherman first moved this plan,
known as the Connecticut Compromise, and made the first argument
in its support, to which his colleague, Oliver Ellsworth,
afterward gave the weight of his powerful influence. The
Convention afterward, almost in despair of any settlement
of this vexed question, referred the matter to a grand committee,
on which Mr. Ellsworth was originally named. But he withdrew
from the committee, and Mr. Sherman took his place. Mr.
Sherman had the parliamentary charge of the matter from the
beginning, and at the close of the Convention, moved the provision
that no State should be deprived of its equal vote without
its consent.
When Mr. Sherman's known tenacity, and his influence over
the great men with whom he was associated, testified to by
so many of them, is borne in mind, it seems there can be no
doubt that he is entitled to the chief credit of carrying
out the scheme which he himself devised, and which, years
before the Convention met, he himself first moved in the
Continental Congress for which he made the first argument,
and which was reported from the committee of which he was
a member, representing the State which gave the name to the
Compromise.
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