ALL ABOUT THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

By Alyssa Evans

After the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the people of the United States sorely needed a new government. But what, exactly? Under the Articles, the central government was weak and unstable, without the ability to even tax its states. Needing a new plan, delegates from the states gathered in Philadelphia. Revision after revision, compromise after compromise, our founding fathers finally crafted the Constitution as we know it today, and it has held ever since.

INTRODUCTION

• The constitution was crafted primarily by delegates, also known as “Framers” of the Constitution (Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania), Alexander Hamilton (New York), James Madison (Virginia), William Peterson (New Jersey), Edmund Randolph (Virginia) and Roger Sherman (Connecticut)). Representatives from 12 of the 13 states eventually attended.

• The convention for the revision of the Articles of Confederation began on May 25, 1787. After months of heated debate, the new Constitution was finally completed on September 17 of the same year.

• The convention was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE AND WHY

• The events leading up to the Constitution were primarily, Shay’s Rebellion– a violent protest by farmers due to the prospect of losing their land. Though the Northwest Ordinance was fairly successful, the unrest created by the Rebellion made Americans fearful. Even though the government militia was just powerful enough to fight the farmers off, it caused the American people to question the effectiveness of the Articles.

• Last and most importantly, the Constitution was created due to the weakness of the Articles of Confederation. A weak central government was ineffective– and that needed to change.

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS SLIDE

• The preceding documents of the Constitution include the Virginia Plan, a proposal that the government be divided into three branches– legislative, executive and judicial, each with the power to “check” each other. This plan called for strong central government. Membership in Congress was based on population. The rival plan to this was the New Jersey Plan, which was very similar to the Virginia Plan in structure, but the primary difference was that every state received one vote in terms of representation. Population has no value . However, there was a compromise to this, appropriately called the Great Compromise. This implemented a bicameral legislature, one based off of population, in the other, each state receives two representatives regardless of population.

• The Three Fifths Compromise was significant as well. This was the result of a dispute as to whether enslaved people should count as population. The Compromise states that three fifths of enslaved people count as population.

PRECURSORS OF THE CONSTITUTION

• The Constitution gave the central government much more power in that they now had the sole power to coin money, tax the states (especially to pay off the debt from the war), raise a national army from said taxes, regulate commerce, and prohibit states from conducting foreign affairs. The Constitution gave the American people a much more stable government than in the days of the Articles of Confederation.

PROBLEMS SOLVED BY THE CONSTITUTION

• The Antifederalists felt that the Constitution interfered with state sovereignty and republicanism (they believed that representative government could only exist in a small territory). The lack of a Bill of Rights, a feature of every state constitution , caused skepticism as well. Many were intimidated by the idea of strong central government, fearing that it would rehash the oppression of the British King, even though the president’s power is severely more limited than a monarch’s.

LIMITATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION

• Though these are modern ideas that were unheard of in the days of the Revolution, I would alter the Constitution to include the equal rights of all genders, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, ages, socio-economic statues, creeds (or lack thereof), and nationalities– not just the “equal” rights of white men with property.

• I would probably elaborate more on rights to privacy and one’s own body and property (both intellectual and physical) more than is stated in the constitution.

• I might or might not include the right to bear arms, as I am a pacifist and believe gun control is a serious problem in this country.

HOW I WOULD IMPROVE THE CONSTITUTION

Though I believe that the constitution is still relevant today, the only way it has been able to stay relevant is our ability to make amends to it, and that the interpretation of the constitution is able to change over time. It may not be relevant in the way our founding fathers intended it to be hundreds of years ago, but due to the adaptive nature of the constitution, it is still relevant and useful today.

RELEVANCE OF THE CONSTITUTION

• McDougal, Holt. United States Government: Principles in Practice. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

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