Sherman's Argumentative Analysis

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Starting in Philadelphia on May 25th ,1787, fifty-five state delegates attended the Constitutional Convention. Their goal? To create a new government that would not succumb to the same faults of the Articles of Confederation. With the events leading into the American Revolution and the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation fresh on their minds, many of the delegates traveled to the Convention with their own conflicting agendas of what the American government should become. Today, many people agree that the Constitution should be interpreted with the intentions of the original framers in mind. Some do not consider the behind-the-scenes reasoning for the design of the approved Constitution like the need to have nine of the thirteen states ratify it. The Virginia Plan and the concerns from James Madison’s opponents firmly established the importance of critical thinking and compromise in the decision-making process. At the start of the convention, a proposal written by James …show more content…

He argued that the influence state legislatures had over the national policy-makers should increase. Sherman disagreed with almost every aspect of the national government proposed by Madison’s plan. He did not see the need for the voters to elect members of the house, the House to select the members of Senate and the power that the president had to veto. On the issue of representation by population size, Roger Sherman believed that at least one branch of Congress will have “three or four of the large States …rule the others as they please” without equal state representation (235). He also believed that the authority to regulate internal commerce should go to the states and if there was a dispute Congress or the courts could resolve it (238). With his outspoken opposition to James Madison, Roger Sherman’s influence on the Constitution became