The purpose of this meeting was to create a brand new government from the current weak government for the newly formed United States of America.

The Constitutional Convention was a very important meeting held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The previous government, the Articles of Confederation, had lots of problems. The state governments were too powerful compared to the national government!

The initiators of this meeting were James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. They knew it would be better to create a brand new government than to fix the current broken one.

The head of this meeting was George Washington. Previously, he was a general in the Revolutionary War, the war that led to the creation of this country!

This meeting lasted several months. During these months, there was lots of arguing and anger on all sides, which led to some compromises.

People from the state of Virginia proposed the Virginia Plan. The Virginia Plan called for the government to be divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate. Also, the Virginia Plan called for the representation in both of these houses to be proportional to the population of the state. This would favor larger states because the bigger the state, the bigger the population, so the more representation you have in government.

People from the state of New Jersey proposed the New Jersey plan. The New Jersey plan was created as an alternative to the Virginia Plan. It called for states having an equal number of representatives in Congress, regardless of population. It also called for only a one chamber Congress, unlike the Virginia Plan. The New Jersey plan favored small states.