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Flaws Of The Constitution Dbq

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Recommended: The weakness of the articles of confederation

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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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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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 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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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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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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