Pages 198-204 Notes - kjhgf PDF

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Pages 198-204 Notes (Quiz): The Constitutional Convention (1787): - In 1787, the Confederation called for a special convention to gather in Philadelphia’s Old State House (now Independence Hall) for the “purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation” - After four months of deliberations carried out in stifling heat behind closed windows and locked doors, thirty-nine delegates signed the new federal constitution on September 17, 1787 - Most of the framers of the Constitution, later dubbed the “Founding Fathers,” were members of the nation’s political and economic elite (Thomas Jefferson and John Adams did not participate because they were serving as diplomats in Europe) - Most had been members of the Continental Congress, and eight had signed the Declaration of Independence - In the summer of 1787, they gathered in Philadelphia “to form a more perfect union,” as the preamble to the new Constitution asserted Drafting the Constitution: - Most active in the debates was James Madison. He was the ablest political theorist in the group and the central figure at the convention. The thirty-six-year-old Madison, a Virginia attorney, had arrived in Philadelphia with trunks full of books about political theory and a head full of ideas about how to strengthen the Confederation - Madison had an agile mind, a huge appetite for learning, and a lifelong commitment to public service. He was determined to create a new constitution that would ensure the “supremacy of national authority.” The logic of his arguments—and his willingness to support repeated compromises—proved decisive in shaping the new constitution - Two basic and interrelated assumptions guided the Constitutional Convention: (1) that the national government must have direct authority over the citizenry rather than governing the people only through the state governments and (2) that the national government must derive its “sovereignty” (powers) directly from the people rather than from the state governments - The insistence on the authority of “the people” was the most important political innovation since the Declaration of Independence, for by declaring the Constitution to be the voice of “the people,” the founders authorized the federal government to limit the powers of the individual states - Experience with the Articles of Confederation had persuaded the delegates that an effective national government needed new authority to collect taxes, borrow and issue money, regulate interstate commerce and international relations, fund an army and navy, and make laws binding upon individual citizens. Experience also suggested to them that the states must be stripped of certain powers: to print

paper money, make treaties with other nations, wage war, and levy taxes on imported goods - This concept of dividing governmental authority between the national government and the states came to be called federalism, another major contribution of the new American republic to the rest of the world The Virginia and New Jersey Plans: - James Madison drafted the framework for the initial discussions at the Constitutional Convention. His proposals, called the Virginia Plan, started with a revolutionary suggestion: that the delegates scrap their original instructions to revise the Articles of Confederation and instead create an entirely new federal constitution - Critics of the Virginia Plan submitted an alternative written by William Paterson of New Jersey. The New Jersey Plan sought to keep the existing structure of equal representation of the states in a unicameral (one-house) Congress but gave Congress the power to levy taxes and regulate commerce and the authority to name a chief executive as well as a supreme court - After intense debate over the two plans, the dispute was resolved by the Great Compromise (sometimes called the Connecticut Compromise), which used elements of both plans in creating a new legislature structure for national government The more populous states won apportionment (the number of delegates representing each state) by population in the proposed House of Representatives, while the delegates who sought to protect states’ power won equality of representation in the Senate, where each state would have two members The Structure of the Federal Government: - The delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention were preoccupied with power: who should have it and how it would be used - To prevent power from being abused, each branch of the new national government—executive, legislative, and judicial—was given a separate sphere of authority as well as the responsibility to counterbalance the other branches, a principle known as separation of powers, to keep any one of the three branches of the government from growing too powerful Legislature (Congress): - For it would have two “houses,” each intended to counterbalance the other, with one (the House of Representatives) representing the voters at a large and the other, the Senate, representing the state legislatures - The “lower house” of Congress, the House of Representatives, was designed to be closer to the voters, who elected its members every two years - Under the Articles of Confederation, voters had not elected the members of Congress; instead, they had been chosen by state legislatures

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The “upper house,” or senate, would be a more elite group, elected for six-year terms, not by voters directly but by state legislatures Executive (President): - Most of them expected the Congress to be the dominant branch. By contrast, Alexander Hamilton, a delegate from New York who was a celebrated attorney and the former chief of staff for General George Washington during the Revolution, wanted the president to serve for life, but the delegates eventually decided that the president should stand for election every four years - The president could veto acts of Congress, subject to being overridden by a two-thirds vote in each house. The president became the nation’s chief diplomat as well as the commander in chief of the armed forces and was responsible for the execution of the laws - But the powers of the new president were also to be limited in key areas. The chief executive could neither declare war nor make peace; only Congress could exercise those powers. The House of Representatives could impeach (put on trial) the chief executive and other civil officers on charges of treason, bribery, or “other high crimes and misdemeanors.” An impeached president could be removed from office if two-thirds of the senate voted for conviction - To preserve the separation of the three branches, the president would be elected not by the Congress but by “electors” chosen by “the people” in local elections - This “Electoral College” was a compromise between those wanting the president elected by a vote in Congress and those preferring election by a popular vote of qualified citizen Judiciary (Court System): - The Constitution called for a national supreme court headed by a chief justice. The role of the national judiciary was not to make laws (which was reserved to Congress) or execute or enforce the laws (which was reserved to the presidency) but to interpret the law as applied to specific cases and to ensure that every citizen received equal justice under the law - The U.S. Supreme Court had final authority in interpreting the U.S. Constitution as well as in adjudicating disputes arising from the various state constitutions. - Article VI of the Constitution declared that the federal Constitution, federal laws, and treaties are “the supreme Law of the Land.” “We the People”: - The men who drafted the new constitution claimed to be representing all the American people. There were important groups of Americans left out of the Constitution’s protections Dealing with Slavery: - Many of the framers viewed slavery as an embarrassing contradiction to the principles of liberty and equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the new Constitution

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By contrast, delegates from the southern states strenuously defended slavery. During the 18th century, the agricultural economies of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia had become dependent upon huge numbers of enslaved laborers, and delegates from those states were determined to protect the future of slavery The success of southern delegates in getting slaves counted for purposes of calculating a state’s representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College would give the southern states disproportionate power in the Congress by increasing the number of southern votes in the House of Representatives...