Did the Founding Fathers Want to Even Things Up for Smaller States?

Why an Electoral College? I wonder if the theory on giving more influence to the smaller states is an invention that came years after the Constitution was written. I don't know that, but I wonder. I wonder if the founding fathers simply wanted to create a way for determining how many electors there would be, and proportioning them to the number of members of Congress was what they decided on, with little thought that it meant evening things up for the smaller states. At any rate, it seems the founding fathers clearly wanted the electors to be free agents, not bound to vote for anyone. If this is true, then the theory that the founding fathers wanted to soften the influence of public voters in large states is questionable. As designed, there is no popular vote for president, So, if the founding fathers wanted to even things up, it wasn't to even up the popular vote. I understand, in fact, the state legislators elected the electors until 1828. A popular vote for president wasn't even tallied till then. Doesn't that show that we did, indeed, abandon doing it the way the founding fathers envisioned?