Notes on the Founding Fathers and Creation of the Constitution

We discussed the Founding Fathers, which someone advised were "boring." I gave you some notes, which you did not have to copy--I am reposting them here.

Who Decided What to Put in the Constitution?
Some interesting notes…

We have agreed that the Articles of Confederation did not work. It was difficult for the Federal government to collect taxes, and the states had their own interests in mind. They were not inclined to give power to a federal government that would replace the King. Hence, we see an ideological split. The Federalists believed that the Articles of Confederation were so flawed that they needed to be replaced. The Anti-Federalists felt that all decisions should be left to the states and “the People.”

“The People,” Federalist James Madison argued, did not truly exist. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson (a staunch Anti-federalist), Madison explained that there were so many social classes and interests that it was almost impossible to define “the people.”

Madison felt that the best government should be a government where the interests of the people were fractured and different. The best government should have a balance of power contained between the three branches of government, but that in the end, the federal government should have veto power over the states. He did not get his exact wish—Anti-federalists were too afraid that this closely resembled the situation that had existed before under the King. The Colonies could make laws for themselves but the King had absolute veto power. They were not excited to vote for a Constitution that held similar power.

There were many options that could have happened during the Constitutional Convention:
1. The states could have broken up into individual regions or “confederations.” A confederation is a union of states united for some reason—perhaps defense or economic reasons.
2. The states could have stayed together under the Articles, which would probably have meant that the government would have continued to be disorganized and eventually dissolve.
3. The Articles could have been amended in some fashion.
4. The Articles could have been thrown away (and the Constitution created with regional compromises) [This is what happened]
5. The new Constitution could have been created containing the strongest Federalist language, in effect exactly reproducing the situation the colonists left under the King.

What did we get in the new Constitution?

• A balance of power—a bicameral (two-part) legislature. One part, the House of Representatives, would be based on population, and the other, the Senate, would allow each state the same number of votes. The federal government did not get to veto the state laws in the Congress.
o The Anti-federalists wanted the Congress to be purely population-based (ie, the voice of “the people”) and the Federalists wanted each state to have the same power but to be trumped by the federal government (the federal gov’t would have the final veto power).
• An Executive branch with a President and Vice-President who would make sure the laws were carried out.
• A loosely-defined Judicial branch without a clearly spelled out role. The Supreme Court was created, but at the time it was never really clear whether they would have absolute power to check laws. They asserted this power in the case Marbury v. Madison later, but at the time of the creation of the Constitution, it was unclear.

Key Compromises:

The Great Compromise: divided the Congress into two branches, providing checks and balances.
• The Virginia Plan divided Congress into two groups both of which had the number of members based on population.
• The New Jersey Plan was an amending of the Articles of Confederation and had the number of representatives in Congress the same for each state.
The Great Compromise took one element from each plan and made a compromise—the Senate would have the same number of representatives from each state and the House would have membership based on populations. Furthermore, each slave would count as 3/5 of a person toward House membership (The Three-Fifths’ Compromise).


A Brief cast of characters:

George Washington: Fought the Revolutionary War. Was upset that ineffective supply lines and confusion between states almost lost the war. Suffered a devastating winter in Valley Forge when Colonists persisted in selling supplies to the British because the British paid in reliable currency.

Alexander Hamilton: Aid to GW who also saw the tragedy unfold in Valley Forge. Upset because there was no strong gov’t to insure that the Colonists were united in supplying the soldiers.

Thomas Jefferson: Wrote the Declaration of Independence, which gave a long list of complaints against the excessive government of the King, where he could veto any laws or assert any power over the local Colonial government.

James Madison: Young revolutionary thinker—a lawyer, in fact. Thought that the bigger the government, the better it would operate. Small local governments were often victim to partisanship (inter-community drama and fighting) and unfairness. Big governments would operate better. The bigger the better—the best chance for the US Gov’t would be to have the federal government able to override state governments and also to have more land, more people, and more government.

William Patterson: supported the New Jersey Plan which gave states equal representation in the Congress.