Daniel Shays considered himself a loyal citizen, a veteran of the Revolutionary war, and on the side of justice when he began protesting against high taxes that were running his fellow Massachusetts farmers out of business. His small armed rebellion was quickly put down, but did impress the Founding Fathers in the government to consider a revision to the Articles of Confederation governing the nation. The need for revisions was already conceived by many of them, and Shay’s Rebellion gave them urgency.

On this day, May 14, in 1787, fifty-five delegates from every state except Rhode Island met in Philadelphia to discuss reforms to the Articles of Confederation. That plan was soon discarded as impractical and too limited. What was needed, everyone agreed, was a whole new system for state representation in the government.

Two plans were proposed for such a system. The populous states not surprisingly favored The Virginia Plan, which envisioned representation proportional to population. The New Jersey plan, preferred by the small states, called for equal numbers of representatives from each state, without regard to population. Agreement was reached via the Connecticut Compromise, which incorporated parts of both. The upper house (Senate) would have equal representation from each state, while the lower one (House of Representatives) would assign delegates according to their population.