ipl-logo

Constitutional Convention Pros And Cons

990 Words4 Pages

The result of this victory enabled the following event to transpire: the Constitutional Convention. In 1787, four years after the American Revolution ended, George Washington and fellow influential people met in Philadelphia. The before them was imperative to the newly independent nation’s success. The newly formed Government needed to replace the Articles of Confederation, which had been hastily put together after the American Revolution. There needed to be a permanent and binding document that would unify the states as opposed to individual state power. The first individual to propose a plan was James Madison of Virginia with the Virginia Plan. Several state representatives would propose their plans before the convention, including William Patterson with the New Jersey …show more content…

The state of Massachusetts had several grievances with the document. This was because it failed to mention basic human rights which included issues with press, religion, and freedom of speech. This was the precursor to addition of the Bill of Rights. The document was ratified with a compromise that Massachusetts agreed upon and cautiously ratified by the state. Following the ratification of the constitution by Massachusetts, the remaining states; Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York ratified the document. Eleven states had agreed that the Constitution would come into law on March 4th, 1789. In 1789 North Carolina would be the 12th state to ratify the constitution. Rhode Island was the last one to accept the U.S. Constitution and refused to ratify the document. Rhode Island agreed to ratify the Constitution only after the U.S. Government had threatened them, they were the last state to join the United States formally. The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution, with 12 amendments, 10 of them being accepted by the states in

Show More
Related
616 Words | 3 Pages

Constitutional Convention(1787)- Twelve states participated in the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia the summer of 1787. The first thing accomplished at the Convention was the election of George Washington as Convention president. The delegates agreed upon a structure for their government consisting of a Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branch. The next topic tackled was how would the states be represented with the smaller states on one side of the argument and the larger states on the other side. This argument led James Madison to propose the Virginia Plan.

Read More
803 Words | 4 Pages

Redmond Peiro Ms. Smith Maryland State Constitution Paper 9 February, 2016 In the months preceding the American Revolution, a convention was held in Annapolis between a number of Maryland’s most powerful men in which to discuss the development of a new government. In addition to this, they sent representatives to the Continental Congress to finalize pre-war preparations. On July 3, 1776 the convention agreed that a new group was to be created to draw up their first state constitution as the old ad hoc government structure was considered inadequate. “That all government of right originates from the people, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole.”

Read More
429 Words | 2 Pages

Unit 3 Test After the Revolution and the failure that was the Articles of Confederation, the nation needed order. Thus the nation’s leaders came together during the summer of 1787 at the Philadelphia Convention to draft the Constitution of the United States. The constitution was ratified in 1788. The Federalist Party had to gain nine of the thirteen states’ approval of the constitution to ratify it despite the goals of the Declaration of Independance. After the tyranny of the British rule, the new citizens of the United States wanted a severely limited government.

Read More
516 Words | 3 Pages

A little over a decade after having declared their independence from Great Britain and working together to agree on a rudimentary constitution, the thirteen American colonies found themselves divided on a new issue. Governed by the Articles of Confederation, it soon became evident to all the sovereign states that this doctrine was inadequate, thus the provinces of the east coast convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This was the stage for the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where James Madison, William Paterson, and Roger Sherman all argued three of the most crucial proposals that served as aggregates to the United States Constitution. These proposals were known as The Virginia Plan, The New Jersey Plan, and the resulting Connecticut Compromise. Although the convention was originally intended to amend parts of the Articles of

Read More
193 Words | 1 Pages

15.) New Hampshire was the 9th state to ratify the constitution which made it become the new law. Rhode Island was the last to ratify it. 16.) Shay’s rebellion helped in the creation of Constitution.

Read More
305 Words | 2 Pages

During the revolutionary war congress felt that it needed a document to unite the states and set forth the principles and laws of the nation. Benjamin Franklin wrote the first draft of the articles to congress although it was never formally considered. It wasn’t until the 4th version of a draft was presented by John Dickinson, which congress began to feel closer to what they were looking for. After being revised three times, the document was approved to be submitted to the states in November 1777. All but one state, Maryland, agreed to the articles.

Read More
601 Words | 3 Pages

1791}- Ratification of Bill of Rights There where orginally 12 Amendments proposed, 10 of those rights where ratified on December 15, 1791 and became the Bill of Rights. These rights defined the rights of the citizens as they related to the newly formed government under the constitution. (www.ourdocuments.gov) There was a belief by some at the time the Bill of Rights was being discussed that having the constitution as it was would lay the way for the government to take over; some feared a violation, such as they had been subjected to by the British.

Read More
121 Words | 1 Pages

Virginia Plan was created by James Madison but presented to the Constitutional Convention by Edmund Randolph, Governor of Virginia in the year of 1787. The Virginia Plan was about a new form of government and called for the number of votes each state would receive would be based on the population instead of each state receiving just one vote. James Madison and other 56 delegates met in Philadelphia in May 1787, they wanted to make amendments in the Articles of Confederation. They were successful and managed to create a new constitution and as James Madison was representing Virginia, he had become the chief recorder of information. Virginia Plan served as that basis for debate in the development of the U.S. Constitution.

Read More
194 Words | 1 Pages

Many of the state conventions ratified the Constitution, but called for amendments specifically protecting individual rights from abridgement by the federal government. The debate raged for months. By June of 1788, 9 states had ratified the Constitution, ensuring it would go into effect for those 9 states. However, key states including Virginia and New York had not ratified. James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, knew that grave doubts would be cast on the Constitution if those states (the home states of several of its chief architects, including Madison himself) did not adopt it.

Read More
959 Words | 4 Pages

he Constitutional Convention was composed of men of strong principal; men with firm opinions and the education to support those views. Their patriotism and analytical prowess fueled the Convention and its countless debates, resulting in months of writing and perfecting the document that serves as our nation’s foundation. The delegates’ intensity caused them to continue haggling over details up until just days before the Constitution was completed. Such was the case on September 14th, 1787, a mere three days before the Constitution was sent off for ratification. Several issues were raised for discussion that day, including that of impeachment, the publication of all the proceedings of the lower house of Congress, and the appointment of a national

Read More
191 Words | 1 Pages

Before the U.S. Constitution there was the Articles of Confederation. The document could declare war, negotiate treaties, and control foreign affairs. It couldn’t enforce laws, tax, and raise its own army. What the Articles Of Confederation lacked was a strong central government. Alexander Hamilton called for a constitutional convention in 1786, and it took place in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787.

Read More
1444 Words | 6 Pages

In 1791 the Bill of Rights was Ratified the states officially ratify the first ten amendments to the Constitution, also known as the Bill of Rights. President Washington had called for their ratification in his first inaugural address. On November 19, 1794, American statesman John Jay signed the Amity, Commerce, and Navigation Treaty with Britain. The treaty, known as Jay's Treaty, was designed to resolve issues between the United States and Britain. Federalists supported and Democratic-Republicans opposed the treaty but it kept the US out of a war with Great Britain.

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

The Constitutional Convention, a meeting of state delegates from May of 1787 to September 1787, resulted in the creation of a new constitution and therefore a new government for the United States of America. While representation was debated over at the Constitutional Convention, issues that created much more controversy were the distribution of power between branches, and between state and federal governments. Under the Articles of Confederation, representation in the national government was satisfactory, however the creation of a national government that welded a significant amount of power changed how each state wanted to be represented in the national government. Delegates, mainly from the larger New England states, at the Constitutional Convention were concerned over the matter of how small states were represented when compared with large states. As many plans suggested, representation based on population favored the larger states, and also the states with a higher percentage of

Read More
494 Words | 2 Pages

In effect, the Continental Congress was actually asking the colonies to summon themselves into being as new states. The sovereignty of these new states would rest on the authority of the people. Although the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island merely retouched their colonial charters, constitution writers elsewhere worked tirelessly to capture on black-inked parchment the republican spirit of the age. Massachusetts contributed one valuable idea, when it called a special convention to draft its constitution and then submitted the final draft directly to the people for ratification. Once adopted in 1780, the Massachusetts constitution could be changed only by another specially called constitutional convention.

Read More
479 Words | 2 Pages

The Constitution had a much stronger centralized government, which enforced democracy. The Constitution was created for the people, to secure the natural born rights, like the freedom of speech. In 1787, the Constitutions final text was finished and was said to have been about 4,200 words in length and on the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 Benjamin Franklin said “I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such because I think a central government is necessary for us… I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution.” Soon after the colonies including Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut ratified the constitution, but many states including Massachusetts opposed the constitution because it was said to have lacked reserved undelegated powers to the states and constitutional protection of basic political rights.

Read More

More about Constitutional Convention Pros And Cons

Related Topics

Open Document