APUSH 3.8 The Constitutional Convention and Debates over Ratification

  • Under the Articles of Confederation, state power was much stronger than national power
      * This led to a slew of problems discussed in 3.7
      * James Madison saw the many problems with the system and wrote to George Washington about it
  • Madison proposes a government with checks and balances, but qualified that the new system must be ‘obtained from the people’

Compromises

  • At the Constitutional Convention, the various parties compromised on various things
  • Representation in Bicameral Legislature
      * There were concerns that every state had an equal number of representatives, states with a large population would not have a fair presence
      * Alternatively, representatives proportional to population would mean smaller states were overshadowed
      * This was resolved by creating the senate (the first method, 2 reps. per state) alongside the House of Representatives (by population)
  • Power of the executive branch and the electoral college
      * Each state elects “electors” that represent the state
      * These electors would contribute to a system for electing the president
      * The number of electors for each state equals the state’s number of senators + number of members in the house
      * They also instated the “winner takes all” format, where states would hold elections internally but the winner of that internal election would then be the vote for the entire state
      * The electoral college aimed to control voter fraud, inform voters, and distribute voting power among states
  • Central vs. state power
  • Slavery and the 3/5 compromise

Ratification

  • The New Constitution was sent to each state for ratification
  • They decided to require 9 of 13 states to approve the Constitution for it to go into effect
  • Some states faced bitter internal division over ratification
  • Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey all ratified in December of 1787
  • Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York ratified throughout the year in 1788, in that order
  • North Carolina ratified in November of 1989, and Rhode Island waited until May of 1790 to agree

Federalists

  • The federalist leaders were James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay
  • They wrote essays New York newspapers, numbering 85 total and becoming known as the Federalist Papers
  • They were authored under the name “Publius,” implying that these essays embodied the will of the ‘public’
  • It explained the rationale behind new government structure and ratification

Anti-Federalists

  • George Clinton, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, and John Dewitt
  • Anti-federalist essays were written under the names “Cato,“ “Brutus,” and “Federal Farmer”
  • They raised questions about the proposed Constitutions
      * The need for a Bill of Rights
      * Protection of state power