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The Early Years of the Constitution

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Summary of Evidence After drafting the Declaration of Independence and declaring war on Britain, the delegates called the Second Continental Congress into session with the objective to create a government. By 1777, the delegates finished drafting the Articles of Confederation and sent it out to the states to be ratified. Yet, the Articles of Confederation proved to be ineffective in managing the country’s economy and the revolutionary war caused massive inflation that devalued most state currencies. Congress in turn tried to print money but failed to keep the economy alive. In addition, the delegates of the Second Continental Congress were sick of paying taxes to England and in turn created the Federal government in a way that was unable to levy taxes of the states. The Articles would continue to be the law of the land until many Americans became fed up with a government that was unable to unite the colonies. The final straw came when Daniel Shay led 1,200 western Massachusetts farmers in an attack on the federal arsenal at Springfield. Since a very small national force was maintained to man the frontier forts, there was no army to control the revolt and that ultimately led to the formation of the Annapolis Convention in 1786. When the delegates to the convention were unable to resolve anything, the Constitutional Convention was called at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1786 to rewrite the Articles of Confederation. Yet James Madison and Alexander Hamilton called for a completely new government rather than fixing the Articles. After electing George Washington to preside of the convention, it was decided that an entirely new government was need. One of the most important topics at the convention was the creation of the legislative branch. The Virginia plan was introduced by James Madison and would give representation in congress proportional to the population of the state. The large states advocated the Virginia Plan to create a bicameral legislature. Because of this set up, the Virginia plan came to be known as the “Large State Plan”. On the other hand, the smaller states in the union supported the New Jersey plan, which was designed by William Paterson. Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had equal representation in Congress, and Paterson wanted to keep it that way. Unhappy with both plans, Alexander Hamilton proposed the “British Plan” (named after Britain due to the similarity of a strong centralized government). Under Hamilton’s plan, state governors would be elected by the national legislature and the bicameral legislature would also have the upper house being appointed by electors and would serve for life. His plan was dismissed due to the resemblance of the British. In addition it destroyed state authority, which the states were unwilling to give up with good reason. Finally, Roger Sherman steps in and proposed the Connecticut Compromise, also known as the Great Compromise, which created a bicameral Congress in which states would be equally represented in the Senate and proportionally represented in the House of Representat

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