What Is The Articles Of The Constitution – On May 13, 1787, General George Washington arrived in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Washington was the most famous man in the United States.

He was the leader of the army that overthrew the British in the Revolutionary War. The war made the 13 American colonies independent in 1783.

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In 1787, the 13 states stretched along the Atlantic Ocean, from Georgia to present-day Maine. Philadelphia was the largest city. The US also had rights to land up to the Mississippi River. Spain controlled most of the rest of the region.

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Beginning in the summer of 1786, some unpaid soldiers who could not pay their debts tried to prevent the courts from taking their farms. Shays’ Rebellion was named after Daniel Shays, a former army captain. (University of South Florida)

But by 1787, the confederation was in trouble. Her conference was weak. It could not resolve disputes between states. She could not pay her debts to other countries. He couldn’t even pay the American soldiers who fought in the war for independence. And some of these unpaid soldiers began to protest.

The protests scared many people in power. The confederate government, they said, could not protect private property and prevent anarchy. They asked Congress to convene a meeting of state leaders to discuss the changes.

George Washington was one of the people who believed that a stronger government was necessary. Although he wanted to stay home after the war and take care of his property, he agreed to attend a meeting to improve government. In the late spring of 1787, horses and a carriage drove him over 150 miles (250 km) of rough road to join other state leaders in Philadelphia.

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At the time, the meeting was called the Philadelphia Convention or sometimes the Federal Convention or Grand Convention. Today we usually call it the Constitutional Convention.

The Philadelphia State House was one of the most important buildings in the early United States. Americans adopted the Declaration of Independence and created the Constitution here. (US Library of Congress)

Ultimately 55 men from 12 states participated. Only the smallest state, Rhode Island, chose not to send someone.

Portrait of representatives Age: The youngest was 26 years old. the oldest 81. The average age was 42. Education: Most had a college education. Several had degrees. Almost half studied at Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Professions: Law, business, finance, real estate and agriculture. Some were also governors, judges, doctors and military veterans. Public service: Eight signed the Declaration of Independence. six signed the Articles of Confederation; and forty represented their states in the Confederation Congress.

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The delegates elected George Washington president of the convention. But Washington said little during the meetings. It was another Virginia man, James Madison, who quickly became a leader. Madison had come to Philadelphia with a plan to strengthen the power of a central government.

“…there is no doubt but that the result will have a powerful effect on our destiny.”

James Madison was very smart. He was also very wise with politics. So he gave his plan to a more powerful representative to read.

On the first day of the convention, Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph outlined Madison’s plan for a national government. It had three parts, or branches.

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Many of the delegates were shocked. Madison’s proposal was very different from the confederate government. The confederate government had no president or courts. And in the Confederate Congress, each state had one vote. The states were all equal. Instead, Madison wanted to give more populous states more power than less populous states.

William Patterson, a representative from New Jersey, proposed a solution that gave small states more power. Delegates voted for the New Jersey plan. But they didn’t agree on that either.

The conference continued. Delegates met five—and sometimes six—days a week in the Assembly Room of the State House. It was small and warm. Men crowded around the communal tables. Many took notes on paper with pens dipped in ink. They took and took off their glasses. They hit their canes on the floor.

Early on, the delegates decided not to tell anyone else about their discussion. They decided to keep it a secret in order to change their minds later. As a result, they kept the windows in the assembly hall closed. The summer air was still and heavy.

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Around 3:00 p.m., the delegates adjourned or adjourned the day’s meeting. They walked a few kilometers to where they were staying. Some rented a room in a house. Others stayed in a tavern, a type of hotel that had both a restaurant and a bar.

Sometimes the delegates met for dinner and continued their discussions informally. But the work of the assembly was slow. And the men missed their wives, families and businesses back home.

James Madison proposed that representation be based on population. For example, every 40,000 people can have a representative.

But representatives from small states fought against the idea. They did not want to be overpowered in Congress. They said that each state should have the same number of representatives.

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Roger Sherman of Connecticut partially resolved the issue. He proposed a Congress with two parts: one part with representation based on population and one part with equal representation.

“Religion and humanity had nothing to do with the question [of slavery]. Self-interest is the principle that governs nations.’

At the time of the convention, about one in five people living in the US was a slave.

Slavery was legal in most states, and the entire country’s economy depended in part on the slave trade or slave labor. However, the majority of slaves lived in the South. Most worked on large farms called plantations that grew crops for profit.

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The ratio of slaves to free increased from the state of Maryland southward. (1790 Federal Census Report)

Southern representatives wanted to include slaves in their population. After all, the larger the population, the more representatives in Congress.

But anti-slavery representatives objected. They pointed out that state laws treated slaves as property. Counting slaves in the population, they said, would simply give slave states more power to keep people enslaved. As the number of slaves increased, so would the political influence of the slaveholding states.

The dealers adopted the same formula. They decided to count “the whole number of free persons” and 3/5 of “all other persons” for purposes of taxation and representation. The decision to count 60% of the slave population is known as the 3/5 clause.

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In addition to clause 3/5, delegates created some other rules for slavery. They said the national government could not prohibit states from taking part in the international slave trade until 1808 – more than 20 years in the future.

And, they said officials in each state must return escaped slaves to their owners — even if the slave escaped to a state that banned slavery.

The Philadelphia Convention came to an end. Some representatives had already left. It was September. The weather was getting cooler.

Much of the work is done. The delegates had decided to retain many elements of Madison’s plan for a centralized government. At the same time, they found ways to share power with state governments. In doing so, the Constitution created a system that was, as Madison later described it, “part federal, part national.”

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Most importantly, the delegates agreed that the power of government did not come from Congress, or from a president, or from a king, or even from a deity. They clearly stated that the people themselves gave the Constitution its power.

For most representatives, democracy meant a kind of anarchy. Scholars could point to only a few examples of successful democracies in history – and these were in small areas. By contrast, the US of 1787 spanned about 1.4 million kilometers and included almost 4 million people.

With about 44,000 people, Philadelphia was the largest city in the US at the time of the Constitutional Convention. The 1790 Census showed the variety of people who lived and worked there. They included female heads of household, who often supported themselves and their families as teachers, innkeepers, or shopkeepers. (The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)

Most states allowed only white men who owned property – about 6% of the population – to vote. Women, slaves, free people of color, and many poor people could not vote. Native American Indians also could not vote because they were considered separate nations.

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Many state constitutions clearly stated what those rights were. In the final days of the Philadelphia Convention, another representative from Virginia, George Mason, stood up and suggested that the national constitution also describe the rights of the people – for example, the right to be tried in court by a jury of local citizens, or the right to practice a religion freely.

Some dealers agreed with George Mason. But others, including Madison, did not believe a bill of rights was necessary. If rights arose naturally, opponents argued, they did not need to be described.

Besides, most delegates were tired. They were ready to go home

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