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Articles Of Confederation And The Constitution Dbq

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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. …show more content…

“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

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