Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler’s
History. We’ve been going through unit 3 of the AP U.S. History curriculum, and in
the last video we looked at the first constitution of the United States, which is to
say, the Articles of Confederation. We ended with the failure of that document and so in
this video and the next we’re going to look at how that failure led America to create a
new Constitution. This video will deal with the Constitutional Convention, and the next
one, the Constitution itself, and oh baby, it’s gonna be saucy. So if you’re ready to
get them brain cows milked, let’s get to it. So, the Constitutional Convention. The
main question we’ll be trying to answer in this video is as follows: What were
the differing ideological positions on the structure and function of the
newly conceived federal government? And now this portion of the video is sponsored
by the Heimler’s History subscribe button below. I usually say this at the end, but nobody ever
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you’re being helped and want me to keep going. If that’s what you want, then get that clicky
finger out and do your worst. Back to the video. So in light of Shays’s Rebellion,
on which see the last video, fifty five delegates from the states met in 1787
for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The purpose of the gathering was to shore up
the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, but right as the convention opened, the pressing
question became whether they should try to dress up the turd of a constitution they already
had or create an entirely new constitution in its place. And under the influence of a
powerful minority of men like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the delegates decided
to flush the turd and create a new Constitution that afforded the federal government more
power than it had under the Articles. Now, once that was established, one of the main
debates they had is over representation in the new federal government, like, how would the voices of
the people be represented? And there were two main proposals for this: the Virginia Plan and the New
Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan called for a strong centralized state, and a bicameral legislature
which means there would be two houses in Congress. And within those two houses, the states would
have representatives based on population. Now, Virginia, as you may know, was a big state
with a large population, and so a plan like this very much appealed to the big states
because if they are represented in the federal government by population that means
big states would have more representatives, and thus more influence. To which the smaller
states rose up and said, you so crazy. The small states favored a different plan
for representation called the New Jersey Plan. This plan called for a unicameral
legislature in which every state had equal representatives. Now of course, this would
favor the small states over the big states. And if you can’t see why these two plans
would have been contentious in the convention, let my try to explain it another way. Suppose
three families decide to go out to dinner. Family A has three people, Family B has three people,
and Family C has ten people. Now suppose families A and B both have a hankering for Mexican food,
while Family C hates Mexican food and wants to go for Chinese food. And then further suppose that
these families can’t come to a compromise and they start to fight. Families A and B are like, I got
to have me some chalupas. Family C is like, your mom’s a chalupa. And a quarrel begins. Finally,
they decided to put the dinner choice to a vote. If they decide to have equal votes, then A
and B are going to win because they both want Mexican and there are only three votes.
And this will be untenable to family C because they have ten people to please
while A and B combined only have six, and that means chalupas. But if they decide to let
everyone have a vote, then even A and B combined can’t beat Family C because it’ll be six to ten,
and baby we bout to have some Mongolian Beef. So that was the main contention in the
argument over representation at the convention, except way more than chalupas were at
stake, it was actually the balance of power for the new nation. So the debates grew
furious over this question of representation, and finally through negotiation,
collaboration, and compromise, a new plan for representation was proposed
which was called the Great Compromise. This plan provided for a bicameral legislature,
which again, means two houses. The first house, the House of Representatives, would represent
the states by population. The second house, the Senate, would represent each state
equally by giving each state two votes. Now, with that fight settled, the delegates
moved on to another contentious battle over representation which was fought between slave
states and free states. The main question was whether the enslaved population of the
South (especially) would be counted for purposes of representation in the House
of Representatives. The southern states, of course, said, Oh heck yes they should. And
the northern states replied, Isn’t your whole system of slavery built on the idea that the
workers in your fields are not in fact humans? Well yeah. So why would they count for
representation if they’re not human and therefore not citizens. Well son, you see, in
this particular case it’s gonna benefit us to consider their humanity, what with our power
and influence being at stake, so you know… Now I’m kind of joking about it, but this
was an exceedingly contentious debate. Many delegates were worried that the South would
walk away from the convention if they said no to counting enslaved people for the purposes
of representation. And the reason they feared that is because the southern delegates
TOLD them that’s what they would do. And so another set of compromises was born. First
was the Three-Fifths Compromise which said that three fifths of the enslaved population could
be added to the population for purposes of representation. And since this was happening right
at the same time that slavery was being outlawed in the Northwest Territory, southern delegates
wanted more assurances that slavery wouldn’t be messed with. And so the convention agreed to
take the ban of slavery off the table until 1808. And there were many more compromises, but those
are some of the major ones. It’s also going to be important for you to know the outcomes of their
debates on how voting for national representatives would take place. Members of the House of
Representatives would be voted in directly by the people for two year terms. Members of the
Senate would be elected by state legislatures for six year terms. And the election of the newly
conceived executive branch, which is to say, the president, would occur by a process governed
by the electoral college. This meant that the president would be elected not by the people, but
by the states. Each state chose a certain number of electors based on their population, and those
electors would then vote for the president. And that can be potentially confusing, but what you
need to take away from that is this: the delegates argued that the election of the president should
be removed from the hands of the people and put into the hands of a small group of people who were
uniquely suited to choose the right candidate. Now with all those items hammered out, the
delegates agreed that in order for this new Constitution to become the governing document
of the new American nation nine out of thirteen states had to agree on it, and that agreement
is what we call ratification. And as soon as the convention adjourned, two opposing sides
quickly formed on the ratification issue: the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.
The Federalists, who were mostly urban and commercial type folks, went to their various
states and tried to persuade the people to ratify the new Constitution. To this end three
of the Federalist luminaries—Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—pumped out an
insane amount of essays published anonymously in newspapers that explained the nature of
the Constitution and why the states needed to ratify it. These essays collectively
became known as the Federalist Papers. The Anti-Federalists went back to their
states and tried to persuade the folks NOT to ratify the Constitution because it
simply invested too much power into the hands of the central government at the expense
of the states. One of their main problems with the Constitution is that it had no provision for
the protection against the federal government’s intrusion on individual liberties, which
is to say, there was no Bill of Rights. Now it probably won’t surprise you to hear
that the Federalists won the battle. Partly they won by persuasion—they were simply more
organized—and partly they they won by conceding to the Anti-Federalists that once the Constitution
was ratified, they would add the Bill of Rights which both enumerated individual rights and
made provision to protect individuals and states from the overreach of federal power.
And so by mid-year 1788 the requisite nine states had ratified the Constitution and it
was now the governing document of the land.
Okay that’s what you need to know about
Unit 3 Topic 8 of the AP U.S. History curriculum. If you want help getting an
A in your class and a five on your exam keep making these videos for you then go ahead
and subscribe and I shall oblige. Heimler out.