A ‘New’ Plan for Government – The Constitution
On the afternoon of May 15, 1787, Edmund Randolph, the governor of Virginia, arrived in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. The young nation (the United States) faced violence and lawlessness. And now delegates from throughout the states were coming to Philadelphia to discuss reforming the government. Early in the convention, Randolph rose to speak.
Let us not be afraid to view with a steady eye the [dangers] with which we are surrounded. . . . Are we not on the eve of [a civil] war, which is only to be prevented by the hopes from this convention?
When the meeting of delegates was being held, Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as ambassador to France at the time, read the list of delegates and wrote, “It is really an assembly of demigods.”
Back in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, many Americans thought that government was the main threat to people’s rights. But by 1787, many thought that people often came into conflict and needed a government that could maintain order. As a result, the government had to be strong enough to protect people’s rights but not too strong to be controlled. James Madison wrote about this problem.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it [the government] to control itself.
Madison had read more than a hundred books on government in preparation for the meeting. He may have made the greatest contribution of any of the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention. Madison was so important that he earned the title “Father of the Constitution.”
The initial purpose of the meeting was to determine how they could ‘fix’ the Article of Confederation. Soon they realized that the Articles could not just be amended, but that a new form of government would be necessary. The delegates worked in secret to develop a new plan for government. Edmund Randolph, one of the delegates from Virginia, offered a plan that would have three branches to it. This plan became know as the Virginia Plan.
The first branch of government would be the legislative, which made the laws. The second branch was the executive, which enforced the laws. The third branch was the judicial, which interpreted the laws.
In the Virginia Plan, the legislative would have two houses. In both houses, the number of representatives from each state would be based on the state’s population or its wealth. The makeup of the legislative branch became a major issue for the delegates. The larger states supported the idea of that the number of representatives be based on a state’s wealth or population. The smaller states opposed the plan because they were worried that the larger states would end up ruling the others.
Other plans were offered, such as the News Jersey Plan, and the delegates debated the issue for a while, until a compromise was reached. It was decided that there would be two houses in the legislature. One house would be the Senate. Within the Senate, each state would have an equal number of votes. The other house would be the House of Representatives. In the House of Representatives, representation would be based on the population of each state; the more people who lived in a state, the more representatives that state would have.
After the convention members agreed on and passed a plan for government, it was sent to the states for ratification (approval). This plan for a new government was know as the Constitution and it needed to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.
Meetings were held all over the country in order for people to hear about and debate the new plan for government. Supporters of the Constitution became know as Federalists and those opposed to the constitution were known as Antifederalists. The Antifederalists thought that the Constitution took too much power away from the states and did not guarantee rights for the people.
Meetings and debates were held around all thirteen of the states about whether the Constitution should be ratified or not. Numerous newspaper articles and pamphlets were written in support and against this new plan, the Constitution. During one meeting, Samuel Huntington, Connecticut’s governor, address the group and said the following:
This is a new event in the history of mankind. Heretofore, most governments have been formed by tyrants and imposed on mankind by force. Never before did a people, in time of peace and tranquility, meet together by their representatives and, with calm deliberation, frame for themselves a system of government.
By June of 1788, nine states had ratified the Constitution, but four states still had not. Without the support of all the states, it was possible that the country might be split in two. One large complaint was that it did not include a bill of rights. A bill of rights is a set of rules that defines people’s rights. It was believed that a bill of rights was needed to protect people against the power of a national government. Many of the states requested that a bill of rights be added, so it was agreed that a bill of rights would be added to the Constitution after the new government was set up. The decision to add a bill of rights resulted in the remaining states to ratifying the Constitution.
In 1789, the new Congress placed one of its members, George Mason, in charge of writing a draft of the bill of rights. Mason was a big supporter of a bill of rights and submitted a draft of them to Congress. Congress edited Mason’s draft and proposed adding them to the end of the Constitution as amendments. These amendments were sent to the states for ratification. Like the Constitution itself, the amendments needed three-quarters of the states to ratify them.
In 1791, ten of the amendments were ratified and became law. The ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution became known as the Bill of Rights. Currently there are 27 amendments to the Constitution, but only the first ten are known as the Bill of Rights.