15.

Drafting the Constitution

The 1780s were a very important and difficult time for the new United States. After the
Revolutionary War, many people were disappointed because they had expected life to
get much better—but it didn’t. The economy was bad, and people were unsure about
how the country should be run. This time is often called the “Critical Period” because
the future of the country was uncertain.

In 1787, a group of leaders met in Philadelphia and created a new plan for the
government. This plan became the Federal Constitution. It was very different from the
earlier system (under the Articles of Confederation) and gave more power to a strong
central government. However, it also gave the people a role in approving this new plan.
This approval process was called ratification.

The Constitution showed how seriously people were thinking about politics and how
much had changed since the Declaration of Independence in 1776. There were many
different opinions, but the Constitution was an attempt to bring the country together
with a clear and organized system of government.

15c. The Tough Issues

Even though the delegates at the Philadelphia Convention shared many goals and had
similar backgrounds, it wasn’t clear how they could fix the Articles of Confederation to
create a stronger national government. At the beginning of the meeting, they made some
important decisions about how things would work. First, they chose George Washington
to lead the Convention. Then, they agreed that each state would have one vote, just like
in the old Congress. They also made a big decision to keep everything secret. The
public and the press would not know what was happening, and the delegates promised
not to talk about it outside the meetings. They believed that secrecy would help them
speak more openly and honestly. In fact, the public didn’t learn much about what really
happened until James Madison’s notes were published long after his death in the 1840s.

Soon after the Convention began, the delegates made a major decision: they would not
just try to fix the Articles of Confederation—they would create a completely new plan
for the government. This was a big change from what Congress had told them to do. It
opened the door for new ideas and bold proposals. One of the most important came
from James Madison. He presented what became known as the Virginia Plan. It called
for a strong central government with three main parts. First, the national government
would be more powerful than the individual state governments. Second, the new
government would be directly connected to the people, allowing them to vote for some
national leaders. Third, the government would have three separate branches: a
legislature (to make laws), an executive (to carry out laws), and a judiciary (to interpret
laws). The legislature would have two parts, or houses. The lower house would be
elected by the people, and that house would then help choose the upper house. Together,
both houses would help select the executive and the judges.
Madison’s plan gave the national government much more power, and many delegates
supported it. But it also created conflict. Delegates from small states were unhappy
because under this plan, states with more people would get more votes. That meant
small states would lose a lot of influence. They preferred the old system, where each
state had the same number of votes. In response, the small states introduced the New
Jersey Plan. It kept a one-house legislature, and each state—no matter its size—would
still get one vote. This was similar to how Congress worked under the Articles of
Confederation.

The argument between the large and small states became the biggest issue at the
Convention. It might sound simple—big states versus small states—but it was a serious
problem. All the delegates agreed that a stronger national government was needed, but
they didn’t agree on how to create it fairly. After a lot of debate, the Convention finally
decided to keep discussing Madison’s Virginia Plan. Even though not everyone liked it,
they used it as a starting point. That decision marked a turning point. The delegates
were no longer just fixing the old system—they were now building a brand-new
Constitution. The change was so big that two delegates from New York were shocked
and left the meeting.

15d. Constitution Through Compromise

At the Philadelphia Convention, the biggest issue was still representation—how to fairly
share power between the people and the states in a stronger national government. The
Connecticut Compromise offered a solution: the new legislature would have two
houses. In the Senate (upper house), each state would get two representatives, keeping
state equality. In the House of Representatives (lower house), the number of
representatives would be based on population. A national census every ten years would
decide how many people each state had. This plan helped balance power between large
and small states, making both sides agree.

Other major problems needed compromise too. One was voting rights—different states
had different rules about who could vote. In the new system, any white man who paid
taxes could vote for members of the House of Representatives, even if he didn’t own
property. Senators, however, would be chosen by state legislatures. The President would
be elected by an Electoral College, with each state having a number of electors based on
its representation in Congress.

The most controversial compromise was about slavery. Some delegates, like George
Mason, wanted to end the slave trade, but others—especially from South Carolina and
Georgia—refused any limits. They threatened to leave the Convention if slavery was
restricted. As a result, slavery was treated as a political issue, not a moral one. The
Fugitive Slave Clause forced free states to return runaway slaves, and the Three-Fifths
Compromise said that enslaved people would count as three-fifths of a person for
deciding how many representatives a state could have. This gave more political power
to slave states.

After months of intense debate during the hot summer of 1787, the delegates created a
new Constitution that gave the national government more power than ever before. It
could now pass national laws, raise taxes, control trade, and limit some actions of the
states—especially those that favored debtors. In the end, 38 out of 41 delegates signed
the Constitution, showing their support for the new plan. But now came the next big
challenge: convincing the states to accept it.