5 min read•june 18, 2024
Dalia Savy
James Glackin
Dalia Savy
James Glackin
The weak factors within the Articles made many people feel as though the Articles of Confederation needed to be replaced by a set of laws with a more central authority and a federal government with enforcement power.
To review what could be done about the country's inability to overcome critical problems, hosted a conference at his home in . Representatives agreed that the problems were serious enough to hold a meeting later in Annapolis, Maryland so that all the states could be represented. Only five states sent representatives to the Annapolis Convention. Despite the limited attendance, the convention did produce a report recommending that a new convention be held the following year in Philadelphia "for the sole and express purpose of revising the ."
The convention was attended by 55 delegates from 12 of the 13 states. Rhode Island did not send any representatives. The convention lasted for 4 months, and the delegates, many of them experienced and prominent leaders, engaged in intense and prolonged debate. In the end, they proposed a new framework for government, known as the Constitution of the United States.
The delegates knew they needed a new set of laws, but there were debates about how to go about making them. How would power be divided?
One of the main debates at the was how to balance the power between the states in the new government. As you know, the Articles of Confederation had given each state an equal vote in the , but this led to difficulties in passing legislation and achieving consensus on important issues.
During the convention, several different plans for representation in Congress were proposed:
The was proposed by , , and others from the state of Virginia:
The was proposed by and others from the state of New Jersey:
After much debate, the Great Compromise, also known as the Connecticut Compromise, was negotiated:
Now that a framework for Congress was established, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention discussed the representation of slave states.
The determined how enslaved people would be counted in terms of representation and taxation. The compromise was reached between the northern states, which were generally more industrialized and had fewer enslaved people, and the southern states, which were more agrarian and had more enslaved people.
The compromise stated that for the purpose of determining representation in the House of Representatives, and for the purpose of apportioning direct taxes, each enslaved person would be counted as three-fifths of a free person. The compromise was intended to address the concerns of the southern states that their representation in Congress would be diminished if enslaved people were not counted at all, while also addressing the concerns of the northern states that counting enslaved people fully would give the southern states too much representation.
The Constitutional Convention did not deal with the question of the slave trade directly, but the Constitution itself included a provision that prohibited Congress from ending the international slave trade until 1808. However, in 1807, the U.S. Congress passed the , which banned the importation of enslaved people from Africa and the foreign slave trade, effectively ending it on January 1, 1808. This is important to note that this did not end slavery itself in the U.S. and it was still legal for people to own enslaved people within the states, it just limited the importing of enslaved people from Africa.
The Convention delegates also agreed to establish a system of electing the president, which was later known as the . The purpose of this was to give smaller states some representation in the presidential election, while also allowing the election to be conducted more efficiently. Under this system, each state is allotted a number of electors based on its representation in Congress, and the candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes (270 or more) becomes president.
As you know, the electoral college system has been the source of much controversy and criticism, with some arguing that it can lead to an election of a candidate who did not receive the most popular votes and that it gives disproportionate power to the small states over larger states. There have been some proposals and attempts in the past to change or replace the Electoral College system.
The Constitution was finished on September 17, 1787, and then sent to the states for ratification.