1. Rethinking the US Constitutional Convention
Constitution Role Play:
Who wasn’t invited

3. Difficulty in setting up a new nation
Importance and difficulty of writing a set of laws to govern a new nation
1st time in human history that revolution waged for the purpose of having the governed involved in determining how they were to be governed- at least some of them

4. Some issues at the Convention
Slavery
Balancing power between big states and small states
Branches of government

5. Two key questions at our Convention
SHOULD SLAVERY BE ABOLISHED?
WHO SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE?

6. Chronology of Pre-Convention
Vocabulary
Short lecture on groups
Short video explaining the dynamics of race and class in the colonies
Receive roles and folder with position paper outline (speech outline) /answer questions
Alliance building
Speech writing and practice oral presentations
Create signs/ decorate

7. Role play chronology Opening statements from each group.
Other groups may respond
Ask for formal proposals from groups
Voting on the proposals
Reflection writing

8. What do I need to turn in? Vocabulary
Role play worksheets with questions and answers
Speeches
Reflection questions
Role play evaluation

9. Who was invited? Male southern plantation owners
Northern merchants and bankers

10. What groups weren’t invited to the Constitutional Convention
White workers/indentured servants
Enslaved Africans
Free African Americans
White women
Native Americans

11. White workers/indentured servants
Worked in the colonies for four to seven years to pay for passage from Europe
Promised land and food when indenture was over

12. Enslaved African-Americans
African slavery develops in Virginia after fewer indentured servants were available to work tobacco fields
Slavery developed “one law, one person at a time.”

13. Free African –Americans
Very few in the south
Constantly in fear of being sold into slavery
Northern blacks able to speak out more freely than those in the south about injustices of slavery

14. Iroquois League The “five tribes”- lived in what is now NY
Well planned
Based on Constitution that spelled out how to choose leaders and conduct business

15. White women in the colonies
“Remember the Ladies.” Abigail Adams
Women had no rights to their children, to property and when she married, all property went to her new husband.

16. What was decided at the real convention

17. Slavery and the Constitution
Slavery and the slave trade would be allowed to continue until at least ( Article 1, Section 2 clause 3; Article 1, Section 9)
The word “slavery” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution
Fugitive slave law enacted (Article 4, Section 2)

18. THREE-FIFTHS COMPROMISE: slaves would be counted as 3/5’s of a person for purposes of taxation and representation for white population

19. Large states / small states
Lower House of Representatives: states would get representatives based on their population
Upper House: The Senate: Each state gets two representatives no matter how many people in the state.