Writing the Constitution

What the Framers Agreed On Everyone at the Constitutional Convention agreed on three things: 1. That the new government needed to be stronger than the one under the Articles of Confederation

2. That the new government should be a republic, which is a form of government where people elect representatives who make decisions on their behalf. A republic is different from a pure democracy in which every citizen votes on every issue (like they had in Athens, Greece). ? Why do you think we created a republic as opposed to a Pure Democracy?

3. They also agreed that the government should have a separation of powers. Since most of the delegates had read Baron Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, they created a federal government with three separate branches (just like most states already had)

Simulation Here are some real scenarios that were discussed at the Constitutional Convention In small groups, pretend you are the Founding Fathers and come up with solutions to these problems Problem 1 The big states want representation in Congress to be based on population That would mean bigger states would get more reps, like PA, which has 10 times the voting population of RI The small states, of course, want each state to have an equal number of representatives, regardless of the size of their population. What should you do?

Problem #2 Assume that reps in Congress are based on population for this scenario The higher a state’s population, the more money it has to pay in taxes to the federal government. However, a higher population also means more reps in the House of Representatives So what about slaves? They’re not citizens, but they are a large part of the population in the south. How should they be counted? Or should they be counted?

Ok, let’s see what our Founding Fathers came up with!

COMPROMISES Virginia and other large states wanted membership in Congress to be based on population (this was the VIRGINIA PLAN) 1790 United States Free and Slave Population by State (Thousands of People)

Smaller States thought each state should have the same number of representatives (this was the NEW JERSEY PLAN)

The Great Compromise Roger Sherman came up with this idea: The legislative branch would be divided into two houses (This is known as a bicameral legislature) 1) In the House of Representatives representation would be based on population 2) In the Senate, every state would have 2 senators.

The Three-Fifths Compromise Another compromise was required over the issue of taxation and slavery Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person That way, federal taxes wouldn’t be too high for the slave states, but they wouldn’t get a lot more representatives in Congress either 3 / 5

RATIFICATION The Constitution was signed on September 17 1787 (“Constitution Day”) It wouldn’t go into effect, however, until it had been ratified by 9 of the states People who supported it as it was were called Federalists A group of essays, known as the Federalist Papers were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay (using false names) to promote the new Constitution

People who thought the Constitution took away too much power from the states and didn’t support it were called Anti-Federalists Several states refused to sign off on it until it included a Bill of Rights to protect various liberties. They eventually agreed after being assured that the first 10 amendments were in the works and would be added soon.

The Constitution wasn’t completely ratified by all states until the end of 1789 The Electoral College, the system established by the Constitution to elect the president, unanimously named George Washington as our first President, and John Adams as Vice President. The Bill of Rights, our first ten amendments to the Constitution, went into effect at the end of 1791 We have had the same Constitution for over 200 years now!