The Virginia Plan provided that each state would have representation in the House and Senate that reflected the size of their populations. Because every state had one vote under the old system, the smaller states, representing a minority of the population, could block the will of the majority. The smaller states refused to accept any plan that sacrificed their equality. They countered with a plan, introduced by William Patterson of New Jersey, that would have preserved the government structure under the Articles of Confederation.
The convention voted to reject the New Jersey Plan in favor of the Virginia Plan, granting the larger states the most members in both houses of the new Congress. But the smaller states would not tolerate inequality, and they continued to fight for their rights. The convention reached an impasse, just as it planned to take a few days off to celebrate the Fourth of July.
It appointed a special committee to try to work out the disagreement during the recess. Chaired by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, the committee split the difference between the two factions.
This became known as the Connecticut Compromise, or the Great Compromise. The delegates accepted the compromise and, as an additional assurance to the smaller states, wrote into the Constitution that no state would lose its equality in the Senate without its consent which, of course, no state would give. Through this compromise, the Constitution went on to create a single nation from a confederation of states.
Yet, the states remained as permanent and integral parts of the new federal system. The absence of anyone representing Rhode Island served as a reminder to the other delegates that it would be folly for them to require unanimity in any new form of government. They provided that the Constitution could be ratified by the vote of nine of the thirteen states. Nor would unanimity be needed for future amendments. Instead, the approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of the states would be required to ratify an amendment.
From May until September , the delegates deliberated over all aspects of the new government. They worked out its structure and listed the specific powers of each branch. On September 17, , most of the delegates signed the new Constitution. Otherwise, the signers had good reason to feel satisfied with their accomplishment. The elderly Benjamin Franklin pointed out at the end of their deliberations that the back of the chair where General Washington sat while presiding had a half-sun carved upon it.
Afterward, some of the delegates traveled directly to New York City to serve in the Confederation Congress. They presented the Constitution to the Congress, which transmitted it to the states for ratification. Proponents of the Constitution identified themselves as Federalists. Its skeptics became known as Anti-Federalists. The opponents feared the Constitution would create a powerful central government that would overwhelm the states and would run contrary to the democratic spirit of the American Revolution.
The Constitution was a pragmatic document that sought to balance the varied interests of the large and small states, the mass of people and the wealthier elite, and those who supported and those who opposed human slavery.
George Mason had never left his native Virginia until he traveled to Philadelphia as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. Born on a Virginia plantation in , Mason was a planter and also treasurer of the Ohio Company, which sold land to settlers moving westward. To assist his work with the Ohio Company, he read each of the colonial charters.
At first he worked closely with his fellow Virginia delegate, James Madison, but soon their thinking diverged and Mason grew disillusioned. Mason feared the Constitution gave too much authority to the President over Congress, and too much power to the national government over the states.
He died in , suspicious of the Constitution to the end. The northern states had already begun to abolish slavery at the time of the Constitutional Convention, but the southern states were growing more dependent on slave labor.
At the convention, southern delegates insisted that the Constitution not interfere with slavery. Northerners agreed, both because they considered slavery a state matter, and because they felt that the southern states would never enter the Union without such a guarantee. The Constitution prohibited Congress from ending the importation of slaves before It also provided that slaves be counted as three-fifths of a person to determine taxation and representation in Congress.
At the time, slaves accounted for about 20 percent of the U. During the ratification of the Constitution, the most inflammatory issue was not its toleration of slavery but its lack of a bill of rights. Thomas Jefferson, who had drafted the Declaration of Independence, was away serving as the American minister to France.
In order to win ratification, the authors of the Constitution needed to explain and defend their handiwork to the people. These essays have been reprinted in book form in many editions since then, and are known today as The Federalist. In one of his essays, Madison discussed the failure of past republics when one faction grew so strong that it dominated and suppressed all others.
Madison predicted that the American republic would survive because of its size and its continued growth. In a large republic, no single faction would predominate, he reasoned. This would prevent a powerful majority from suppressing the rights of the minority. As Americans moved westward into new territories, they would form new states that would join the Union and add even more groups into the equation.
The arguments put forth by the authors of The Federalist carried great weight, and they still inform us about the thinking of the framers of the Constitution. On December 7, , Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution, and other states quickly followed. The fiercest battles took place in the larger states. To gain support, Madison pledged that the new government would move speedily to adopt a bill of rights.
On June 25, , after four months of debate, the Virginia convention voted 89 to 79 for ratification. On July 26, New York concluded an equally divisive debate and approved the Constitution by the narrow margin of 30 to Still, eleven of the thirteen states had ratified the Constitution, which was two more than required.
North Carolina eventually joined the Union in , and Rhode Island in Slavery itself was a thorny question that threatened to derail the Union. It was temporarily resolved when the delegates agreed that the slave trade could continue until After three hot summer months of equally heated debate, the delegates appointed a Committee of Detail to put its decisions in writing.
Near the end of the convention, a Committee of Style and Arrangement kneaded it into its final form, condensing 23 articles into seven in less than four days. On September 17, , 38 delegates signed the Constitution. George Reed signed for John Dickinson of Delware, who was absent, bringing the total number of signatures to It was an extraordinary achievement. Tasked with revising the existing government, the delegates came up with a completely new one.
Wary about centralized power and loyal to their states, they created a powerful central government. Representing wildly different interests and views, they crafted compromises.
It stands today as one of the longest-lived and most emulated constitutions in the world. Elections were set to take place from Monday, December 15, , to Saturday, January 10, , and the new government was set to begin on March 4, Congress was also restructured to reflect the system of representation created by the Connecticut Compromise at the Constitutional Convention.
The Constitution, however, was still evolving. Madison introduced 17 amendments to the Constitution born from the Massachusetts Compromise, of which Congress adopted twelve on September 25, , to send forth to the states for ratification.
Ten of those amendments, known as the Bill of Rights , were ratified on December 15, The Constitution was not ratified by all states until May 29, , when Rhode Island finally approved the document, and the Bill of Rights was not ratified to become part of the Constitution until the end of the following year. Moreover, the capital was not set until July 16, , almost a year and half after the general elections took place. The location of the capital was born, like most decisions in the formation of the budding nation, out of negotiation.
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