To replace the problematic Articles of Confederation, Washington, Hamilton, Jay, Franklin, and others organized the 1787 Philadelphia Convention and started to compose a new law of the country, the United States Constitution. However, it wasn’t easy to make every state come into an agreement on things written in the Constitution, since all the state wanted to make sure they were equally and fairly treated. As a result, several major compromises in the ratified version of the Constitution, including the Great Compromise, Three-Fifths Compromise, Slave Trade Compromise and the compromise on the Bill of Rights. The Great Compromise is the a compromise about state representatives, and it was made between large states and small states. Before the …show more content…
The Three-Fifths Compromise is between the North and the South. The issue they were arguing over is whether a slave should be counted as a part of the state’s population, which determines how many representatives the state can select. The North had a population mostly that was comprise of white man. They believed that slaves shouldn’t be counted as a person since they were not citizens and didn’t have the rights to vote. However, the South disagreed because the majority of their population was slaves. If the slaves didn’t count as a person, the states in South would only have much smaller populations in according state representatives. The majority of the states would not be represent in the Congress, and basically slaves would not be involved in any kind of decision making on political issues, since they couldn’t vote either. During this debate, there were even outspoke critics of slavery. According to A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to America’s Age of Entitlement, Massachusetts’ Elbridge Gerry questioned, “Are [the slaves] admitted as Citizens? Then why are they not admitted on an equality with White Citizens? Are they admitted as property? Then why is not other property admitted to the computation?”. Despite the fact that slaves also deserve equality to other people, it was impossible for the congress to grant …show more content…
In Massachusetts, the Anti-Federalists, led by James Madison, argued that the Bill of Rights was necessary to protect people rights from the government because the government might get too powerful and hurt people’s rights and freedom. They had this fear because they suffered from the British tyranny and worried that the highly centralized government would make the miserable history happen again. Nevertheless, in favor of the government, the Federalists insisted that the Bill of Rights were unnecessary because the Constitution already limited the power of government, so it would not get too powerful. Also, they worried that people might forget to list certain rights in the Bill of Rights, so if later they were fighting for their rights that were not written in the document, the government might use it against them. Eventually, a compromise was made through a vote in Massachusetts; Anti-Federalists agreed to ratify the Constitution without the Bill of Rights, but they should also submit amendments for the Congress to consider adding the Bill of Rights. This compromise sparked people’s thoughts to protect their rights and freedom from the powerful government, and finally, the Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution in
The Constitutional Convention is where the Great Compromise is being settled. What is the Great Compromise? The Great Compromise is an agreement that large and small states reached
Compromises Made at the Constitutional Convention Under the Articles of Confederation the government was weak and had little success. Shay’s Rebellion led to the changing of the laws made on the government under the Articles of Confederation. It also led to a convention which introduced the idea of making a new form of government. In 1787 the Constitutional Convention awoke the ideas of making new compromises that the Founding Fathers had to face. Two of the most important compromises included the voting on president which was called the electoral college system and the decision making of how to ratify the Constitution.
It took the convincing of the Anti-Federalists to explain how the Constitution gave too much power to the central government and did not state the rights and freedoms of the people, therefore lacking a Bill of Rights. The Federalists agreed to a Bill of Rights, and later the Constitution was ratified with nine out of thirteen votes on June 21 of 1788. Soon after the Constitution was ratified, the separation of powers was understood in the United States government. The separation of powers separated each branch of government.
After the Declaration of Independence in 1787, the Federal Government turned to the creation of the Constitution in which delegates from 13 states convened to make compromises on their beliefs for the betterment of a nation. Although the Bill of Rights was initially not a part of the Constitution, the Federalists thought that it was crucial to ensure ratification of the Constitution. This ratification was one of the main reasons why the Bill of Rights needed to be added. Federalists feared a strong, central government, and created a Bill of Rights in order to prevent government abuse. Others believed that a dominating Government could prohibit rights in the future, which would not necessarily be expressed in the Bill of Rights.
Hence Federalists came up with the Bill of Rights as a way to get the Constitution ratified and for people to really see a needed change. The Bill Of Rights which lists specific prohibitions on governmental power, lead the Anti-Federalists to be less fearful of the new Constitution . This guaranteed that the people would still remain to have rights, but the strong central government that the country needed would have to be approved. The 1804 Map of the nation shows that even after the ratification of the United States Constitution there still continued to be “commotion” and dispute in the country.(Document 8) George Washington stated that the people should have a say in the nation and government and everything should not be left to the government to decide.(Document 3) Although George Washington was a Federalist many believed he showed a point of view that seemed to be Anti-Federalists. Many believed that The Bill of Rights needed to be changed and modified and a new document’s time to come into place.
In 1787, Rutledge stated that “the true question is whether the Southern States will or will not be changed to confederate otherwise… the Southern States will not be confederate at all”. This quote shows that the issue of slavery was a significant factor in the formation of the Constitution and that the authors were willing to compromise on the principle of equality to form a cohesive union. It is important to note that the Constitution did not explicitly mention slavery, but it did include clauses that protected the institution. The Three-Fifths Compromise, for example, counted each slaved person as the three-fifths of a person to determine representation in Congress. This compromise gave Southern states more representation in Congress, which allowed them to maintain a balance of power and protect their interests, including the continuation of
After the countless debates, the Great Compromise was what the convention would come into agreement with representation by population in the House of Representatives “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative. ”(add footnote) The smaller states were pleased with equal representation in the Senate “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senates from each state and each Senator shall have one vote.”(add
As the result, the nation split into two groups: federalists, the supporters of the constitution and the antifederalist, the people who against the constitution. The antifederalists argued that “the Constitution lacked a religious test for officeholding and the Constitution failed to guarantee a right to counsel and a right not to incriminate oneself in criminal trials, or to prohibit cruel and unusual punishments,” In response, the Congress proposed the Bill of Rights, consisted of Ten Amendments to guarantees that every citizen would have such rights as “ the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It is also guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This new proposal gained a number of states agree to sign the constitution. The Bill of Rights saved nation from going to another bloody civil war.
This decision angered both northerners and southerners. The North was upset due to the decision, which declared that black Americans didn’t count as citizens, which made no effort in the abolition of slavery. The South’s issue was that the majority of their state population was African American, and would give them less representatives if they did not count as citizens, or people in general. This affected the election of Abraham Lincoln, which led to the South’s succession and the start of the
When our founding fathers first created the Constitution it was found unworkable and had to have some changes before the ratification. In that process people began to have some differences such as the Federalist saw that the enhanced Constitution alone would protect all basic human rights. While Antifederalist saw that we needed an extra addition to the document that would genuinely give the basic rights, liberties, and limit the government from denouncing these rights and liberties from the people. The Bill of Rights was a necessary addition that has and will continue to protect the people from injustice in the government with the help of the Supreme Court.
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.
Introduction: The Bill of Rights was created as a compromise between the Federalist and Anti-Federalist. Due to how old the document is the Supreme Court often has to reinterpret their meaning when adjusting the laws to better fit the ever changing landscape of modern day America. Woot-woot. Feds believed in strong government while Anti-Feds believe in a more local government.
During the Constitutional Convention, the issue of whether slaves should be counted as part of the population when determining the number of representatives in Congress was also addressed. The southern states, where most slaves presented at that point in time, wanted to count slaves as part of their population because they wanted to have more representatives in Congress to strengthen their power (each state was allowed to have one representative for every 30,000 residents). The northern states, on the other hand, opposed this proposal because of two reasons: slaves were treated more like a property than human since they did not own any rights and counting slaves as part of the population would strengthen the power of southern states in Congress.
The bill of rights was created because of a conflict between the Anti-federalists and federalists. The federalists agree that a bill of rights was required. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect the rights of citizens. It guaranteed them their freedom and to keep the government from becoming too powerful thus giving the congress limitations.
How two big arguments turned into big agreements. A Compromise is when two people or states can't agree on something because they both want something different. The two compromises that came out of the constitutional convention are the Great Compromise and the ⅗ Compromise. The Great Compromise was an agreement between the larger states and the smaller states about their representation. The first plan was the Virginia plan which had the senate and the House of Representatives and this made it where it was based on the people which meant if the people in a certain amount from each state voted on something then it would be passed and in the states, this plan favored the larger states because of their larger populations.