What was debated most at the constitutional convention

David Brearley of New Jersey said that representation based on population was unfair and unjust. It is unjust. On June 30, the delegates from Connecticut proposed a compromise. Some delegates began to leave in protest, and a sense of gloom settled over the statehouse.

Intense debates lasted for two more weeks. Finally, the delegates came together and on July 16 agreed to the Connecticut compromise. Representation in the lower house would be chosen by the people. Each state would have one representative for every 40, inhabitants later changed to one for every 30, Also each state would have at least one representative even if it did not have 40, inhabitants.

Each state would have two members in the Senate, chosen by the state legislature. The small states were jubilant, and the large states uncomfortable. But from then on, things moved more smoothly. After arriving at a compromise on electing the legislature, the convention addressed the other parts of the Virginia Plan.

The plan called for a national executive but did not say how long the executive should serve. 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. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Those ideas of the equality of mankind; that governments are based on the consent of the governed; that it is the fundamental obligation of a government to serve the needs of the people it governs; and, indeed, that it is the right of the people to abolish a government that does not serve those ends, has formed the basis of American government and society from that time forward.

These state constitutions were bold revolutionary experiments, and in many cases, because they were the first time state political leaders sought to write down the way their governments should function, they were far from perfect.

But they were an important step forward in the notion that the purpose of governments was to serve the public interest while at the same time protecting individual liberty. Moreover, the Articles of Confederation failed to provide for a chief executive capable of giving energy and focus to the new central government. The fifty-five delegates who met in Philadelphia between May 25 and September 17, , would not only reject the Articles of Confederation altogether, but they would produce the first written constitution for any nation in the history of the world.

Those gathered in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House during the summer of faced a formidable task. Yet somehow, in the space of slightly less than four months, they managed to pull off an extraordinary accomplishment. The Constitution they drafted has been successful for most of U.

And it has brought remarkable stability to one of the most tumultuous forms of political activity: popular democracy. The challenge that all nations in the world have faced not only in drafting a constitution, but also creating a form of government that both provides stability to its nation and sufficient civic responsibility and liberty to its people, is enormous.

Indeed, among the more than constitutions presently operating in the world today, few have been as successful in creating that delicate balance between governmental power and personal liberty among the citizens ruled by their government. The remarkable achievement of the fifty-five men gathered in Philadelphia during the summer of was by no means inevitable.

Looking back on their work that summer, we can identify a few factors that enabled them to achieve their success. Certainly among the most important was the quality of leadership among those most committed to strengthening the American government.

The ringleader was the thirty-seven-year-old James Madison. Standing only a few inches over five-feet tall, scrawny, suffering from a combination of poor physical health and hypochondria, and painfully awkward in any public forum, Madison nevertheless possessed a combination of intellect, energy, and political savvy that would mobilize the effort to create an entirely new form of continental union.

The Pennsylvania and Virginia delegates then met frequently during the days leading up to May Edmund Randolph August 10, - September 12, First United States Attorney General Second Secretary of State "The general object was to produce a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origins, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.

Oliver Ellsworth April 29, - November 26, Senator of Connecticut Third Chief Justice of the United States "The powers of congress must be defined, but their means must be adequate to the purposes of their constitution. It is possible there may be abuses and misapplications; still, it is better to hazard something than to hazard at all.

Supreme Court "Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.

Nathaniel Gorham May 27, - June 11, 14th President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation Helped draft the Massachusetts Constitution "Any person chosen governor, or lieutenant-governor, counsellor, senator, or representative, and accepting the trust, shall before he proceed to execute the duties of his place or office, take, make and subscribe the following declaration, viz.

The United States Constitution was drafted by the Committee of Detail, who used bits and pieces from original Virginia Plan, the decisions of the Constitutional Convention on modifications to that plan, along with other sources including the Articles of Confederation, to produce the first full draft.

From August 6 to September 10, the report of the Committee of Detail was discussed, section-bysection, and clause-by-clause. The most famous copies of this early draft are the ones annotated by President George Washington.

This draft of the Constitution displays Washington's handwritten notes in pencil, recording the Convention's handling of each proposed clause.

Once this phase of the Convention had ended, on September 10, a Committee of Style was appointed to "polish up the document.

The Convention also debated whether to allow the new federal government to ban the importation of enslaved people from outside of the United States, including directly from Africa. They ultimately agreed to allow Congress to ban it, should it choose, but not before twenty years had passed.

Remarkably, it was one of the only clauses of the Constitution that could not be amended. Only in did the United States formally prohibit the international slave trade. Under the Articles of Confederation, the individual states competed against each other economically. They issued their own currencies and even levied taxes on each other's goods when they passed over state lines. Delegates like Washington, Madison , and Hamilton believed that promoting the free flow of commerce across state lines and nationalizing the economy would lead to America's becoming an economic powerhouse.

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