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On May 25, 1787, delegates from seven states met in Philadelphia with the goal of revising the Articles of Confederation. Soon, delegates from five more states arrived.
Of the original states, only Rhode Island wasn’t represented. Some of the most famous names in America were there, including Benjamin Franklin, who, at 80 years of age, was the oldest. George Washington presided over the meeting. However, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were absent because they were both in Europe serving as ambassadors for the new country. Others didn’t attend this meeting because they did not want a stronger central government. Some of the men who fell into this category were Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams. Through the long, hot summer, the delegates debated many issues—and in the end, they changed history.
Virginia came to the convention with a plan that called for two houses of Congress to be created. Each member of Congress would have one vote; that was different than how things operated under the Articles of Confederation, where each state had only one vote. The plan also proposed an executive branch and a judicial branch of the government, whose members would be appointed by Congress. Soon, the delegates realized that they were going way beyond revising the Articles. They were creating a binding law for a new nation. The meeting had turned into the Constitutional Convention. ▼
Delegates at Independence Hall in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention
▲ No one worked harder for the convention than James Madison of Virginia. From France, Thomas Jefferson had sent him hundreds of books about government, and Madison had read them all. Before the convention, he drew up a list of the most important points to be covered. He also took detailed notes during the convention, which provided a written record of the meetings.
▲ Some delegates did not like the Virginia Plan, because they worried that the states would lose all their power to the national government. But others believed that arguments among the states were the source of the country’s problems, and they thought a strong national government would fix that.
The Virginia Plan said the number of members of Congress from each state should be based on the state’s population. Smaller states didn’t like this, but the Great Compromise provided a solution by declaring that every state would send two senators to the Senate. Only the number of members a state could send to the House of Representatives would be based on the state’s population.
The Growth of a Nation
It took many years, but the United States grew from the original 13 colonies to a total of 50 states. The first states joined the Union in 1787, and the last to join were Alaska and Hawaii, in 1959. Click through to see what the U.S. looked like throughout the years.
By September, the delegates had agreed on what the new document should say, and a committee put it in final written form. Several delegates had already left the convention, however, and three of the remaining delegates refused to sign the document. Thirty-nine men signed the final draft on September 17, 1787. Now it was in the hands of the states. Nine states had to ratify, or agree to, it before this document could become the law of the land. ▶
▲ The North and South disagreed about whether slaves should be counted as part of a state’s population. The South said yes, because this would give southern states more members in Congress. The North said no, arguing that slaves were treated as property, so why should they be counted as people? Again, a compromise was reached. The Three-Fifths Compromise said that each enslaved person would be counted as three-fifths of a person.
Reflection
The Three-Fifths Compromise says that enslaved people weren’t considered full human beings equal to whites, but the Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal.” Reflect on the inconsistency in these two ideas. Who were the “men” the Founders were thinking of, and who weren’t they thinking of?
