The delegates generally agreed on the need for a separate executive independent of the legislature. As Madison noted:. Sherman was against enabling any one man to stop the will of the whole. No man could be found so far above all the rest in wisdom. They came to a quick decision that the executive should have the power to veto legislation subject to a two-thirds override in both houses of the legislature.
But they could not easily agree on how the executive should be elected. Delegates proposed many different methods for electing the president. One alternative was direct election by the people, but this drew controversy. Some delegates did not trust the judgment of the common man. Others thought it was simply impractical in a country with many rural communities spread out over a huge area.
George Mason of Virginia said:. The extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the Candidates. Another alternative was to have the president chosen, either by the national or state legislatures.
Delegates voted more than 60 times before the method was chosen. The person with the most votes would become president. And should limits be placed on the number of terms the president could serve?
Underlying this debate was a fear of a monarchy, or of a despot, taking over the country. The convention finally decided on a four-year term, with no limit on how many times the president could be re-elected.
A deep disagreement arose over slavery. The economy of many of the Southern states depended almost entirely on agricultural products produced by slaves. To protect their economy, the Southern states insisted on two proposals. One was to ban Congress from taxing exports to protect their agricultural exports. The second proposal was to forbid Congress from banning the importation of slaves. When the convention received the draft containing these proposals, another heated debate erupted.
Opponents of the ban on exports objected on economic grounds. Those opposed to slavery brought up issues of morality. Ultimately, the delegates who strongly opposed slavery realized that pressing against it would make it impossible for the states to come together. They worked out a compromise with the Southern states. They agreed that Congress could not tax exports and that no law could be passed to ban the slave trade until And in a final concession to the South, the delegates approved a fugitive slave clause.
The delegates had been meeting for almost four months when the Committee of Style presented a final draft of the Constitution on September The draft contained a new provision, requiring trial by jury in criminal cases tried in the new federal court system. Trial by jury was considered one of many basic rights, and George Mason stood up and proposed including a full bill of rights, listing the basic individual rights that the government could not violate.
Eldridge Gerry agreed and moved for a committee to prepare a bill of rights. Mason seconded his motion, but it was defeated, by a vote of 10 to 0. Each state had one vote, and only 10 states were represented for that vote. It is not clear why the motion failed. Eight states already had constitutions that included a bill of rights, so one might have been drafted quickly. Three months after the Constitution was signed, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison saying that it had been a big mistake to omit a bill of rights.
When the Constitution was being ratified by the states, many people opposed the Constitution just because it did not contain a bill of rights. In Massachusetts, and in six other states, the ratifying conventions recommended adding a bill of rights to the Constitution. Talk about a meeting to discuss an overhaul of the limited Articles of Confederation had started several years earlier, and the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention had been endorsed by the Confederation Congress on February 21, Washington also noted that the convention wanted the Confederation Congress to submit the Constitution to all of the 13 states, with nine needed to approve the document, and that the Confederation Congress should supervise the transition to a new elected form of government.
According to notes compiled by a New York representative, Melancton Smith, and other correspondence, there was a sometimes-heated debate for about a week before the new Constitution was submitted for ratification.
That motion failed to get approved. Nathan Dane of Massachusetts approved sending the Constitution on to the states with reservations and as a series of amendments to the Articles of Confederation. Madison countered with an argument the Articles of Confederation were proposed in the same manner and the Constitution was similar in spirit.
What were the key compromises that were made in Philadelphia? By , Americans recognized that the Articles of Confederation, the foundation document for the new United States adopted in , had to be substantially modified. The Articles gave Congress virtually no power to regulate domestic affairs--no power to tax, no power to regulate commerce. Without coercive power, Congress had to depend on financial contributions from the states, and they often time turned down requests. Congress had neither the money to pay soldiers for their service in the Revolutionary War or to repay foreign loans granted to support the war effort.
In , the United States was bankrupt. Moreover, the young nation faced many other challenges and threats. States engaged in an endless war of economic discrimination against commerce from other states.
Southern states battled northern states for economic advantage. The country was ill-equipped to fight a war--and other nations wondered whether treaties with the United States were worth the paper they were written on. On top of all else, Americans suffered from injured pride, as European nations dismissed the United States as "a third-rate republic. America's creditor class had other worries.
In Rhode Island called by elites "Rogue Island" , a state legislature dominated by the debtor class passed legislation essentially forgiving all debts as it considered a measure that would redistribute property every thirteen years.
The final straw for many came in western Massachusetts where angry farmers, led by Daniel Shays, took up arms and engaged in active rebellion in an effort to gain debt relief. Troubles with the existing Confederation of States finally convinced the Continental Congress, in February , to call for a convention of delegates to meet in May in Philadelphia "to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.
Across the country, the cry "Liberty! But what liberty? Few people claim to be anti-liberty, but the word "liberty" has many meanings. Should the delegates be most concerned with protected liberty of conscience, liberty of contract meaning, for many at the time, the right of creditors to collect debts owed under their contracts , or the liberty to hold property debtors complained that this liberty was being taken by banks and other creditors?
Moreover, the cry for liberty could mean two very different things with respect to the slave issue--for some, the liberty to own slaves needed protection, while for others those more able to see through black eyes , liberty meant ending the slavery. On May 25, , a week later than scheduled, delegates from the various states met in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. Among the first orders of business was electing George Washington president of the Convention and establishing the rules--including complete secrecy concerning its deliberations--that would guide the proceedings.
Several delegates, most notably James Madison, took extensive notes, but these were not published until decades later.
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