U.S. Constitution
A general Constitutional Convention to revise the Articles ofConfederation met at Philadelphia in May, 1787. Opinions concerning howthe government should be managed differed dramatically from state to stateresulting in several competing plans: The Virginia Plan, The Pinckney Plan,the New Jersey Plan, and the Hamilton Plan. Some plans advocated givingthe federal government almost total power, others thought that the federalgovernment should be given general powers with interpretation left up toCongress and yet others wanted to grant only specific powers to the federalgovernment (The constitutional convention). In the end, a balance was The Virginia delegation, under the leadership of James Madison andGovernor Edmund Randolph prepared the Virginia Plan which was presented tothe Convention on May 29th and May 30th. Instead of simply amending theArticles of Confederation, the Virginia Plan proposed an entirely newsystem. It called for a powerful national government consisting of threebranches, executive, legislative and judicial with a two-house legislature(Wright and MacGregor, 1987). Under the Virginia Plan, a lower house would
Hewas against terms for the executive because he felt that the incumbentwould spend his time in office creating a political machine to ensure hisreelection. Most delegates did not support the Hamilton plan because theybelieved that it closely resembled the British monarchy and parliament(DeCarolis, 2003). The legislature would have the same power as under the Articles ofthe Confederation, plus the added power to levy some taxes and to regulatecommerce. He was opposed to the retention of state sovereignty as proposed by NewJersey because he believed that state sovereignty worked against theoperations of the federal government. All of theseproposals that differed from the Virginia Plan were rejected by theConvention (Description of Charles Pinckney National Historic Site). Wiliam Paterson proposed the New Jersey Plan, essentially a rebuttalto the Virginia Plan, on June 15th. To protect slaveryPinckney requested a two-thirds majority for all laws regulating commerceand navigation. An agreementknown as the Three-fifths Compromise was reached to count three-fifths ofthe state's slaves in the total population. The Senatewould give equal representation to all of the states with each state havingtwo senators that would be chosen by the state legislature. Sherman's plan called for a Congresswith two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Stateswith slaves wanted to count all of their slaves in the state's populationbecause that would yield more representatives in Congress. Also in common with the Virginia Plan, wasrepresentation in the Senate based on population. Congress was also to be given the power to nullify state lawsthat it believed violated the Constitution, thus ensuring the nationalgovernment's supremacy over the states. Thus, the NewJersey Plan with a single house legislature and equal representation wasmore like Congress under the Articles than was the Virginia Plan (Collier,1986). Hamilton advocated virtually doing away with state sovereignty,noting that as long as there was power to be had in the states, peoplewould aspire to acquire that power, to the detriment of the nation as awhole.
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Acceptance Essays
