Virginia Plan.

The Virginia Plan was a proposal for a new form of federal government presented by the Virginia delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Virginia Plan called for a strong central government divided into separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Most importantly, it proposed a bicameral (two-house) legislature that would allow for representation based on the population of each state. Although favored by the larger states, the Virginia Plan enjoyed little support from the less populous states that stood to have reduced legislative representation under its terms. These states instead supported an alternative proposal called the New Jersey Plan, which called for equal representation for all states regardless of population size. While neither of these plans was ultimately adopted outright, the Virginia Plan introduced many of the key concepts that would eventually come to define the structure of the American federal government as established by the US Constitution.