The Constitution – An Unhappy Medium
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The Constitution: An Unhappy Medium
On March 4, 1789, the United States government started operating under its newly ratified Constitution. Seen by many as a joyous departure from the flawed Articles of Confederation, this date in history is generally considered a positive milestone in American history. However, would the general population during that time period have agreed with this designation? Due to the circumstances under which the Constitution was written, many compromises were made, and many politicians feathers were ruffled. Therefore, the most logical argument would be that the American population of 1789 was anything but content with the final product of the Constitutional Convention.
One of the most famous compromises embedded into the Constitution is that of the legislative branch of its government. The Connecticut Compromise, also commonly known as the Great Compromise, took the opposing Virginia and New Jersey plans, and molded them into what would be the United States Congress. With an approximate population of 747,000 , by far the largest of any state during this time period, Virginia, naturally, was promoting a system of representation corresponding to each states population. Under this system, Virginia would have almost double the number of delegates from Pennsylvania, the second most populous state . Also looking out for their states best interest were the members of the convention from New Jersey. Having less than a quarter of the population of Virginia , a system in which each state would be represented equally would benefit the people of New Jersey, giving them a higher delegates per capita ratio than the large southern states. Fittingly, a state with an average population, after much bickering between the large and small states, introduced a compromise plan, in which both systems would be used. By a vote of five states to four , the compromise was adopted on July 16, 1787. The difference of a single vote confirms that the decision was not unanimous, and the politicians of almost half the states still did not approve of the new legislation system. Some may cite the fact that the compromise did in fact end the quarreling between large and small states on this issue. Theoretically, this would have ended any verbal disputes on the subject, allowing the convention to proceed on to other topics. This compromise would also set a trend to resolve other issues that had plagued the convention . However, as proved by the soon-to-follow Three-Fifths Compromise, the large southern states were still not mollified, and would not accept the compromise as it stood without some compensation. Would a poll conducted amongst the politicians present at the convention conclude that the compromise did not bury all reason for debate? Based on the surviving information and statistics still available at the present, the answer would likely be yes.
The discontent of the large southern states brings up another one of the most famous compromises to be included in the Constitution, the Three-Fifths Compromise. Not significantly far behind the Connecticut Compromise in chronology, the latter could be considered to be the result of the prior. The total population of each state, despite its importance being diminished, continued to be an important factor in the legislative system. Ironically, delegates opposing slavery generally did not wish to count enslaved persons as inhabitants of a state. Delegates supporting slavery, usually motivated by the increased influence in the government their state would receive, generally supported the counting of enslaved inhabitants in a states total population. After the Connecticut Compromise, the large southern states were desperate to regain some of the power they thought was rightfully theirs. Following the example of the newly adopted aspect of the Constitution, more compromises were suggested. Following the failure of the fractions ÐÐ and ÐÑ* during the composition of the Articles of Confederation , James Madison proposed the three-fifths ratio. Like the Connecticut Compromise, this method of counting a states population was accepted by both sides, though somewhat begrudgingly. Some might state that the compromise was an important stepping stone towards the eventual abolishment of slavery about a century later. After all, slaves went from having no status at all in the newly-formed country to the status of more than half of a person. However, this new development in the status of slaves motivated the large southern states to expand slave trade, even after the law supposedly halted the industry altogether . This point might be proven with a graph displaying the number of slaves in the southern states over the 1790s, providing information about any trends that might have occurred in that time period.
After the Revolutionary War, many American politicians desperately wanted to avoid an exceedingly strong federal government. Although the Articles of Confederation attempted to provide a functioning, yet relatively powerless system of government for the new country, the attempt proved to be too extreme. However, politicians still wanted the Constitution to limit federal powers. The Constitution as it existed immediately after ratification still proved to be too powerful for the approval of these politicians. Even before the ratification, politicians like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton quarreled over the idea of a bill of rights, to become amendments to the Constitution. This suggests that, on the date of ratification, enough politicians were unhappy with the sate of things to amend the Constitution ten times, only two years after its original ratification. Some might state, as William J. Brennan Jr. did , that “[t]he Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to Ðcreate rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to