Building a New Nation
After declaring their independence from Great Britain in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the people of the United States had a big job to do. They needed to create and organize a government for their new country. The first government, formed during the war, was a weak federal government called the Articles of Confederation. After being ruled by a king, many feared that a strong federal government would take away their rights. The Articles of Confederation loosely organized the United Statesgiving most power to the individual states and very little to the federal government. Each state had its own constitution and set of laws.
In 1783, the Revolutionary War between the United States and Great Britain officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The treaty recognized the thirteen colonies as free and independent states and Great Britain surrendered any claim on the colonies. After the war, problems with the Articles of Confederation started arising. There was no president, Congress could not charge taxes to pay the war debt, and states were arguing with one another. Rather than acting like one nation, the states were acting like thirteen separate ones. Some people began to fear that the new United States would fall apart. They wanted to make changes to the Articles of Confederation.
In 1787, twelve of the thirteen new states chose to send representatives to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the Constitutional Convention. Rhode Island refused to send any representatives because they feared that changing government would make them lose power as a small state. In the end, 55 delegates attended. These men had the responsibility of addressing problems with the Articles of Confederation. Their original purpose was to revise, or change the Articles of Confederation, but they ended up writing a completely new plan of government for the new nation. This plan for our new government would be called the United States Constitution.
The writing of the US Constitution was a long and difficult process. The delegates worked for over four months on it! The meeting took place during the hottest months of the year, May thru September. There was no air conditioning and they kept the windows closed to keep their discussions private. The 55 delegates all had different ideas as to how the new government should be organized. They needed to compromise, or come to an agreement, on many different issues. Some major issues discussed during the convention were representation of the large states versus the small states in the legislative branch and how long the president would serve. They even discussed the issue of slavery, but were not able to come to an agreement. In the end, 39 out of the 42 delegates present in the last days of the Convention actually signed the Constitution. The United States Constitution continues to be the plan for our government today.
James Madison and George Washington
Although there were many influential Virginians involved in the creation of our new nation, two men stand out among the rest.
James Madison was one of the representatives from Virginia present at the Constitutional Convention. He arrived in Pennsylvania in February, three whole months before the Convention even began! He believed in the importance of having a constitution and wanted to be prepared to convince the other representatives of this. Madison kept a detailed record of the daily happenings – who made speeches, how delegates voted, what topics were discussed – during the convention. These notes are the reason that we even know what happened at the Convention! His skills at compromise helped the delegates reach agreement during the difficult process of writing the Constitution of the United States of America. All of his hard work earned him the title “Father of the Constitution.”
George Washington was another Virginian present at the Convention. He was unanimously chosen by the delegates to be the President of the Constitutional Convention. After the Convention was over, the people of the new United States needed to elect a leader or president as was stated in the new constitution. In 1788, George Washington was elected as the first President. He was a strong leader and was well-known throughout the country for his military leadership during the Revolutionary War.He provided the strong leadership needed to help the young country and provided a model of leadership for future presidents. Thus, he is often called the “Father of Our Country.”
The actions and ideas of these two prominent Virginians and many others helped to form the new constitutional government of the United States.
The Bill of Rights and its Major Influences
The Constitution, or plan for government, that was signed by the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was incomplete. It was missing a section that would guarantee certain rights for each citizens of their newly formed country. When the delegates returned to their home states after the convention to get support for the Constitution, there were some states that would not ratify, or approve the Constitution unless a section that promised these rights was included. Virginia was one of these states. The delegates promised that these rights would be attached and the US Constitution was ratified.
James Madison was given the responsibility to make a rough draft of a list of rights to be attached, or amended to the Constitution. Twelve different amendments listing certain rights for the people were sent to the states to be ratified and ten of them were approved. These ten amendments became known as the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is a very important document that still today guarantees certain rights to each American citizen. Some of these rights are freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to a trial by a jury.
When James Madison was brainstorming the list of rights to be sent to the states for approval, he did a lot of research. He borrowed many key ideas from two earlier Virginia documents: the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.
The Virginia Declaration of Rights was written by George Mason in 1776. It was a part of the constitution written for the new state of Virginia. It states that all Virginians have many rights, including freedom of religion and freedom of the press. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson, states that all people should be free to worship as they please. These two Virginia documents were very important influences on the Bill of Rights.
Virginia’s State Government
Before the United States Constitution was written and adopted in 1787, many of the new states had already written their own constitutions. The original Virginia Constitution of 1776 was written at the same time as the Declaration of Independence. Even though the United States Constitution is the governing document over all of the states, every state in the United States has their own constitution today. All state constitutions must agree with the United States Constitution.
Under Virginia’s Constitution, the state government is organized into three branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial. This is similar to the way that the federal government is organized. Each branch of the state government has a different function, or purpose.
The General Assembly is the name for thelegislative branch of Virginia’s government. It is divided into two parts – the Senate and the House of Delegates. The Senate has 40 members called senators who are elected to serve for four years. The House of Delegates has 100 members called delegates. They are elected to serve for two years. This branch of government makes state laws.
The executive branch of the state government is led by the governor who is elected to a four-year term. The governor can approve or reject the laws that the Virginia Assembly writes. If a new law is made, then the governor makes sure that thelawis carried out. The governor alsochooses a group of people to help run the state. This group is called a “cabinet.” There are cabinet heads for education, health, public safety, transportation, and many other things.
The judges in thejudicial branch of Virginia make up the court system. The courts decide if people accused of breaking the law are guilty or innocent. They also decide whether or not a law agrees with Virginia’s constitution. These three branch of the state government all work together to make our state strong.
Westward Migration
Thomas Jefferson was elected as the third President of the United States in 1800. Three years after becoming president he nearly doubled the size of the United States. At that time, France was trying to expand its empire in Europe and needed more money to do so. Jefferson was originally interested in only buying the city of New Orleans for ten million dollars, but was offered the rest of the territory for only five million more. He accepted the offer making one of the biggest land deals in history. The Louisiana Purchase added over 800,000 square miles of land to the United States.
After the American Revolution, many Virginians began to head west. For close to 200 years, Virginia farmers had been planting tobacco.Over the course of time, the soil‘s nutrients had become exhausted because they did not practice crop rotation and other methods of restoring the soil nutrients. Smaller and smaller harvests caused problems for farmers trying to make a profit with tobacco. Therefore, they wanted to find new land and new opportunities. Many farmers began looking to the south and west for new land. Some Virginians had heard about the Louisiana Territory, a huge piece of land that the American government owned. Almost one million Virginians left, changing Virginia from the most populated state to the seventh most populated statein the United States.
When men, women, and children from Virginia left their homes to move west, they were not only taking their possessions. They were taking with them some intangible things as well – their traditions, ideas, and cultures. The new communities that they settled would reflect these things. They traveled through a place in the Valley and Ridge region known as the Cumberland Gap to get to their new homes out west. The Cumberland Gap is a low point in the Cumberland Mountains where the states of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia all meet.