1. A Constitutional Convention Or How Sometimes You Just Have to Compromise

2. The Articles of Confederation created a weak central government And then farmers rebelled in Massachusetts – Shays’ Rebellion

3. How could the central government stop a rebellion if it did not even have an army?

4. A Constitutional Convention was called It was time to revise the Articles of Confederation

5. There were, however, some conflicts 1- Small states worried about representation – would big states have all the power? 2- And what about slaves – would slaves count in determining the states’ number of representatives?

6. And what would Congress be allowed to tax?

7. So, compromises were reached

8. First, representation in Congress -New Jersey Plan: Smaller states wanted the number of representatives to be the same for all states -Virginia Plan: Larger states wanted representation be proportional to the size of each state’s population

9. The Great Compromise -Or Connecticut Compromise -A bicameral or two-house Congress -A House of Representatives -And a Senate

10. A House of Representatives: where states would be represented in proportion to their population A Senate: where all states would be represented equally [2 Senators per state]

11. And a census would be taken every ten years to determine the state’s population for the number of its representatives in the House of Representatives

12. The Compromise over Slavery Three-fifths Compromise: Three-fifths of a state’s slave population would be counted for purposes of both taxation and representation

13. The Compromise over Trade -Congress was given the power to tax imports but not exports -A tax on imports is a tariff -So, Congress could create tariffs but not tax exports

14. The Constitution also created a federal government with three branches This separation of power prevents any one branch from having too much power This is known as a system of checks and balances

15. The concept Checks and Balances mean that no one branch of government has all the power Each branch can check or limit the power of the other branches

16. Examples of Checks and Balances:

17. The American System of government is called Federalism -This means that there is a federal government and state governments -Some powers are reserved to the states -Some powers are granted to the federal government -And some powers are shared or concurrent powers