The Connecticut Compromise created a two-house Congress with proportional and equal representation, a founding compromise recalled by America250.
Delegates at the Constitutional Convention agreed in July 1787 to combine two competing plans. Representation in the House of Representatives would be based on state population, while every state would receive two senators regardless of population.
The proposal was advanced by Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. It resolved the central dispute between large states, which favored population-based representation, and small states, which feared domination by their larger neighbors.
The agreement shaped Article I of the Constitution. The Senate originally had another important difference from today: state legislatures chose senators. The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, established direct election of senators. The Connecticut Compromise is also called the Great Compromise, so those two names refer to the same settlement rather than separate agreements.