Created in 1789, the Constitution was the final piece in making the United States official. Starting off with the famous “We the people”, this document protects citizens’ rights, gives the branches of government their power, and is used as a reference when creating laws. The first technical constitution of the United States was the Articles of Confederation, which was lacking in many areas and was defective. The Constitution we have now focuses on the rights of the individual, and is referred to quite often to determine if an act is constitutional or not; however, it didn’t start off that way.
The Articles of Confederation was the United State's first constitution. It went into effect on March 1, 1781 when Maryland finally ratified the document.
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“Of the 74 deputies chosen by the state legislatures, only 55 took part in the proceedings; of these, 39 signed the Constitution. The delegates included many of the leading figures of the period. Among them were George Washington, who was elected to preside, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, Oliver Ellsworth, and Gouverneur Morris” (Britannica). Many compromises occurred between these months. One of the biggest disputes was the between Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. “The Virginia Plan was the idea of having 3 separate branches of government, and representation was to be based on the state’s population. On the other hand, the New Jersey Plan suggested that each state should be equally represented and would limit the powers to tax and regulate trade” (Crouse, Kaitlyn. "Constitution" October 2017. PowerPoint File.) Finally, the Connecticut Compromise, or Grand Compromise, settled on having two houses in Congress, the Senate and the House. Another Compromise made was the Three Fifths Compromise. It was the debate on whether the slaves should count in the population of each state. The compromise was that each slave would be counted as three fifths of a person. While this benefited the southern states in terms of having more representatives in Congress, they had to pay more to the
The Virginia Plan was a plan drafted by James Madison and was presented by Edmund Randolf. It was presented to the Constitutional Convention on May 29, 1787. According to the plan, a strong central government had three branches: legislative, judicial, and executive. The plan also proposed two houses: the first one had members elected by the people for three-year terms; the second one had older leaders elected by the state legislatures for seven-year terms. The role of the plan was important for “setting the stage for the convention.”
The Article of Confederation was a document that gave a national government to the United states, after the US declared independence from Great Britain. However, this was the first written constitution for the united states, and this was necessary to have a national government. In addition, after the March 1, 1787 the Continental Congress implement the new government into the thirteen states and the economy. Furthermore, the constitution was a form of government that protect the people rights, as a citizen of the United States.
This compromise was proposed by James Wilson and Roger Sherman, delegates of the Constitutional Convention (Key Compromises of the Constitutional Convention). The Connecticut Compromise, also known as the Great or Sherman’s Compromise was an agreement that big and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention (Key Compromises of the Constitutional Convention). There was also the Slave Trade Compromise, which restricted the number of slaves counted toward representation and taxation to three-fifths the total number of slaves and prohibited congress from outlawing slavery (Key Compromises of the Constitutional
In return, the free states argued that if slaves are considered property, then they should not be counted for in a state’s population and if they are accounted for then they are considered individuals, not property. Upon hearing this, slave states said they would not approve the ratification of the Constitution unless their slaves were counted for in the House of Representatives. A compromise was then made, and it was called the 3/5 Compromise. As a result, only 3/5 of the slave population in these slaves' states were counted for in
The governmental structure was revolutionary in 1787 because it was the beginning of the constitution and the stepping stone to the future United States government. In 1787 the founding father held a constitutional convention to address the problems the government had under the Articles of Confederation. The articles of confederation was the first constitution of the United State, it was established on November 15, 1777 (“The Articles of Confederation”). The Articles of Confederation was created after the United States declared independence from England. The Articles of Confederation established a weak central government that prevented individual states from conducting their own foreign diplomacy (“Milestone 1777-1781).
Zachary Gertner Midterm Essay 1 The United States adopted the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union in November of 1777, as the first written constitution. The Articles of Confederation established a fairly weak central government. It listed the powers that would be given to the Federal Government such as ability to declare war, establish treaties, levy taxes, assured citizens that they had the right to travel freely from state to state, etc. It turned over all rights not exclusively given to the Federal Government to the States.
This United States Constitution was really the second constitution the United States ever had. The first one being The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. It was created by the Second Continental Congress beginning in 1776, all 13 states had ratified it near the beginning of 1781. America fresh off independence from Britain wanted to greatly limit the powers of government and make sure it never became anything similar to Britain’s rule. Because of this the Articles of Confederation gave the government very limited power.
Two different plans, the Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan, came into fuse into one and was known as the Great Compromise which helped delegates distribute even representation state to state. The next large issue, and in my opinion the largest was Slavery which was a difficult and as we know lengthy process which eventually was abolished. Southern slave owners wanted slaves to be counted in the population so they could get more representation on larger states, this lead to the Three-Fifths Compromise where slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person when taking poll on the population. This was very important because if slavery was abolished at this point the southern states would of just disbanded from the convention. The last of major compromise was how they were going to decide who would take the chair of president of our country.
The Untied States put the Articles of Confederation into place on March 1st, 1781, during the Revolutionary War. It was the first form of national government in the U.S. The Articles gave the majority of power to the individual states and limited power to the national government, this power structure was chosen due to the British excessive control on the colonies. Soon it became apparent that the Articles of Confederation was not sufficient means of governing the populace. Therefore in May of 1787, delegates from the thirteen states arrived in Philadelphia to improve the Articles and prevent the country from collapsing.
Not soon after, New Jersey delegate William Paterson devised his own small states plan, known as The New Jersey Plan. Under this, each state would have one single vote no matter the population. After the plan did not pass Paterson left the convention in late July but soon returned to sign the constitution. Each state had a different idea of what was fair and could not compromise. It wasn’t until July 16th ,1787 that the fight for representation was settled by the Great Compromise, also known as the Connecticut Compromise.
The first official constitution of the United States was the Articles of Confederation. A congress consisting of 13 delegates from each of the original colonies worked during and following the American Revolutionary War. The Articles were written in 1777 and formally ratified in 1781. It was one of the nation 's first attempts at establishing diplomacy and reasonable authority. They were well-intentioned, however, the Articles proved to be quite problematic and not entirely functional.
The Articles of Confederation, which were proposed and produced by John Dickinson and accepted as a governmental foundation plan by the Continental Congress in 1781 became Congress’ first effort to unify the newly founded country in economic and political strength through the use of a universal constitution for all of the states that stated the country’s liberty and gave certain rights to each individual state. During the early post-revolution era in America, states were advised by Congress to begin establishing state governments with written constitutions as a foundational structure in which there were almost no regulations or political structure. Many states began their constitutions by stating their “unalienable rights” which usually included the freedom of speech, religion, assembly, petition, the right to bear arms, and the right to equal protection under state
The second compromise was the Three-Fifths Compromise that determined how an enslaved person would be counted for taxation and representation. The end result of this compromise was that ⅗ of all population of slaves would be counted for taxation and
One of the compromises made in the Constitutional Convention is the three-fifths compromise. In this compromise, the southerners wanted to add slaves to the population of the state they lived in. If slaves were included in their state’s population, that state would be able to add more representatives in the House of Representatives. Northerners did not agree with that statement because slaves did not have the right to vote. After the delegates compromised, they agreed that only three-fifths of the slave’s population would be counted into the state’s population.
The Articles of Confederation was a document created by the First Continental Congress. This specific document acted as the very first constitution for the United States of America, published on November 15, 1777. Sadly, the Articles of Confederation had some major problems. Therefore, so did America. The new country was now faced with its latest conflict and the articles had to be ratified.