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Flaws Of The Constitution Dbq

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Following the American Revolution, America was divided into two political groups: the federalists and the anti-federalists. Both parties believed the United states future was in the best interest of the new nation. While the anti-federalists believed in power to the individual states, the federalists believed in a strong central government to body the nation. Prior to 1789, the Articles of Confederation is what held the nation together, despite the immense problems that arose from it. The document was formed in order to equally divide powers in America. Unfortunately, it did the complete opposite. In 1789, the newly revised Constitution of the United States was formed to fix the pre-existing problems. The Constitution gave powers that were …show more content…

The Great Compromise was created soon after which appointed the number of representatives in the House of Representatives according the size of their state. Because smaller states rejected this due to the biased power towards the large states, it was agreed upon that the senate would have the same number of votes regardless of state size. In the southern states, 30 percent of the population consisted of slaves, according to Lowi, Etal (2014). The northern states believed that they should not count towards the population count which would give them more votes in the House of Representatives. Delegates agreed on the Three-Fifths Compromise which would count every five slaves as three people. The slaves were not allowed to vote but they counted towards the population of the states they resided in. Northerns were still against this but realized that this would be the closest they would come to compromise and without it, they would never agree to a new government. According to Lowi, Etal (2014), “This political significance of the Great Compromise and the Three-Fifths compromise was to reinforce the unity of those who sought the creation of a new government.” The Great Compromise reassured those who believed their location would lessen their impact on the newly formed government. The Three-Fifths Compromise would disband the tensions between the north and the south to finally come to an agreement. They were now ready to move past their differences and come together as one nation in the best interests of themselves politically and

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As mentioned in the module, "Lecture Notes for Chapter 2 The Constitution", the Three-Fifths Compromise or "the three-fifths rule", was put into motion as a way to appease Northern delegates while also preventing the Southern delegates from leaving the convention. The compromise ultimately states, "The three-fifths meant that the House of Representatives and the electoral college would be apportioned in part of the basis of property--specifically, property in slaves" (Bardes, Shelley, Schmidt 42-43). In other words, this referred to slaves in that each one would be counted as three fifths of a person, which benefited slave owners the most as that meant they would have more people from the South when it came to determining the representation in Congress. which is how the interests of Southern states were addressed.

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The three-fifths compromise was a system to determine state representation in Congress by counting each enslaved person as three-fifths of a person. Proposed in 1787 by James Wilson and Roger Sherman, it clearly showed the strength of the proslavery forces during the time of the United States Constitutional Convention. Since the Virginia Plan was rejected, the three-fifths compromise was enacted as a new framework for the government. The Southern states demanded more representation politically because their population was vastly increased due to slavery. The Northerners viewed one free man as one vote and one slave not counting as part of the population while the Southerners viewed one free man as one vote as well as one slave as one vote.

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DBQ Essay The United States Constitution is a document that or founding fathers made in order to replace the failing Articles of Confederation (A of C). Under the Constitution, the current government and states don’t have the problems they faced when the A of C was in action. The Constitution was created in 1788, and held an idea that the whole nation was nervous about. This idea was a strong national government, and the Federalist assured the people that this new government would work. The framers of the Constitution decided to give more power to the Federal government rather than the state governments because the A of C had many problems, there was a need for the layout of new government, rights, and laws, and there was a need for the Federal

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The Great Compromise would seek sure to that. The Great Compromise would make sure that all states had an equal vote in the Senate. All states were allowed two votes in the Senate (Doc. D). As for the House of Representatives, every tate had their number of representatives based on the population of that state (Doc. D). As in, every State would receive no more than one representative for every thirty-thousand (Doc. D).

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The upper house would be elected by the lower house, thus ensuring that there is always at least one representative in the upper house. The New Jersey Plan preserved an existing unicameral legislature, in which each state would have equal representation. The compromise that was made called for a bicameral legislature, like the 1 Virginia Plan. However, the lower house number of representatives was determined by the size of the state, and the upper house each state had equal representation. This was just part of the Great Compromise, the subject of slavery had divided the Northern and the Southern states.

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The compromise found in the United States Constitution that will be discussed in this essay is the three-fifth compromise. The three-fifth compromise was in regards to Southern states wanting to count slaves as three-fifths of a person when determining the population but in order to count slaves, those from the north wanted taxation in proportion to representation. The compromise can be found in Article one, section two and states the following, “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians

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The New Jersey Plan was in favor of small states and wanted a unicameral legislature and all states to have equal representation. The Connecticut Compromise, also known as The Great Compromise, or Sherman’s Compromise, was reach during the United States Constitutional Convention in 1787,it was an agreement between two earlier proposals which solved the issue it called for a bicameral legislature with the upper chamber, called the Senate, determined by equal representation, and the lower chamber, called the House of Representatives, determined by the population of each state; it combined both interests. The Great Compromise was proposed to address the feelings from the smaller states that their interest would be drawn out by the larger states. However, the Three Fifths Compromise proposed by Judge James Wilson, and Roger Sherman. The Three Fifths Compromise is three out of every five slaves would be counted for taxes and population.

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America has been shaped in many different ways, but one of the most important is the way the country is governed. Once the Revolutionary War was over, the United States of America needed to figure out a new way to govern their country because when the states had more power than the national government, the country was weak. The Framers of the United States Constitution ultimately decided to give more power to the Federal Government rather than the state government because the Articles of Confederation were weak, the Constitution was strong, and the Constitution was more likely to succeed than the Articles. The Articles of Confederation were used to govern America during the Revolutionary War.

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Following the Revolutionary War, America had just gained independance from Great Britain and needed to form a new government. The Articles of Confederation were established as an attempt to create a government that was unlike Britain’s. Unfortunately, the Articles of Confederation had several weaknesses. When in the process of repairing those weaknesses, the Federalists and the Anti-federalists formed. The Articles of Confederation were very weak as well as useless to America and because of this, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists could not agree on a new type of government.

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The Northern states, smaller in comparison to the south, already did not have as much representation and political power as the southern states. Therefore, the compromise to them was unnecessary, and they felt they would have all the power and dominate in the polls and decisions. Considering the different views the two already had based on slavery, this alarmed the northern states. However, as time passed, the Three-Fifths Compromise would not provide the advantage the slave owning south had hoped. The Northern states grew more rapidly in terms of population and ended up being opposing political power to others.

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In 1777, after the American Revolution had ended, the new United States of America adopted the Articles of Confederation as the new central government. The Articles made the government weak, powerless, and vulnerable out of fear for tyranny. This system had many flaws and created a lack of unity between the states. As a result, the Constitution of the United States was developed in 1789 to solve many of the problems that arose from the Articles. This new system re-constructed the government into three branches and created a system of checks and balances to prevent the government from becoming corrupt.

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They also “included the three-fifths clause which states that in deciding how many representatives a state could send to the house of representatives, the number would be determined by counting free persons, servants, in three-fifths of all other persons { slaves }. Congress was to use the same count for collecting taxes from the states”. Indians were excluded. Finally the framers agreed to include the fugitive slave clause which states that persons who escape from slavery to a state where slavery was prohibited “ shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due”. The compromise on slavery was designed to satisfy the demands of some of the southern states these states would not have supported the constitution without this agreement.

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Not long after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the American citizens began to disagree about how the United States should operate. They were conflicted about how much power the federal government should possess, as stated in Chapter 10 of History in the Making, which says that “at heart, Federalists and Republicans disagreed about how much power to vest in the central government or, conversely, about how capable the people were in governing

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Another major debate during the Constitutional Convention was whether or not the slaves should count towards representation in Congress. While most Northern states wanted to abolish slavery completely, the South wanted them to count towards representation, to allow them for more representatives. The North argued that if slaves could not vote, they should not count, while the South debated against this. In the end, the Three Fifths Compromise was suggested and accepted. This Compromise stated that each slave would count as three-fifths of a free white male.

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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.

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