Constitution

= Kijun Song'14 = Constitution ( 1781-1789 ) media type="custom" key="24860164" align="center"

=√ Timeline= media type="custom" key="24863062"


 * √Presidents ** **:** None


 * √Key Vocabulary ** **:**

[†] Basic Concepts

 * Congress ** – Congress has authority to: tax, regulate commerce, establish post office, declare war, raise army and navy, and call out the militia.

**Filibuster** – Endlessly long speech that blocks legislation. “Cloture” (the vote of 60 senators) stops a filibuster.
====**Supremacy Clause** – Constitution is the law of the land. If there is ever a conflict between state and federal law/jurisdiction, federal law rules. ====

**President Pro Tempore** – Leading members of controlling party in Senate
====**The Preamble** – A preamble is an introductory and expressionary statement in a document that explains the document's purpose and underlying philosophy. ====

**Electoral College** – Each state is assigned a specific number of electors proportional to its population.
====**Articles of Confederation ** – The Articles of confederation was an agreement among the 13 founding states that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states ad served as its first Constitution. ====

**Federalists** – Federalists (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay) supported strong central government.
====**Anti-Federalists** – Anti-Federalists (Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason) opposed to strong central government. ====

[†] Significant Figures
====**Patrick Henry** – Henry was an Anti-Federalist who opposed to ratification of the Constitution at the beginning. “Give me liberty or give me death” ==== ====**Alexander Hamilton** – A founding father, soldier, economist and political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States secretary of Treasure. ====

**Edmund Randolph** – Randolph believed in representation based on population and introduced the Virginia Plan.
====**Gouverneur Morris** – Morris was an American statesman, represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention and was author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**John Dickinson** – Dickinson represented both Delaware and Pennsylvania at the founding of the republic. Author of "Letters of Pennsylvania farmers" ====

[†] Historical Events


====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Land Ordinance of 1785** – One of the accomplishments of the Articles of Confederation. The Land Ordinance of 1785 was a congress established policy for the surveying and selling of western lands. Goal was to raise money through the sale of land in the largely unmapped territory west of the original states after the revolutionary war. ==== ====**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">Shays’ Rebellion (1786) **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;"> – In the summer of 1787, Captain Daniel Shays, a Massachusetts farmer and Revolutionary War veteran, led other farmers in an uprising against high state taxes, debt, and lack of money. ==== ====**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">Virginia Plan (1787) **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;"> – A plan unsuccessfully proposed by Edmund Randolph at the Constitutional Convention, providing for a legislature of two houses,with proportional representation in each house; and executive and judicial branches, to be chosen by the legislature. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**New Jersey Plan (1787)** – Created in response to the Virginia Plan's call for two houses of Congress, because the less populous states were adamantly opposed to giving most of the control of the national government to the larger states. This plan would give one vote per state for equal representation under one legislative bod ==== ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Great Compromise of 1787** – Made an agreement among large and small states to have Constitutional Convention of 1787. Also known as the Connecticut compromise or Sherman's Compromise. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Constitutional Convention of 1787** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">– Replaced the Articles of Confederation and created the United States Constitution. Also known as the Philadelphia Convention and the Federal Convention. ==== ====**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">Three-fifths Compromise (1787) **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;"> –Compromise between Southern and Northern states in which three-fifths of the enumerated population of slaves would be counted for representation purpose regarding both the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representative. ====
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">Treaty of Paris (1783) **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;"> – Officially ended the American Revolutionary War between the United States of America and Great Britain. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, representing the United States, together with David Hartley, representing Great Britain, made the United States to be recognized as an independent country.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Northwest Ordinance (1787)** – Yielded rules for crating new states; it also prohibited the emergence of self-government.
====**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">Judiciary Act (1789) **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;"> – Establishment of the Federal court system. ====

=** √Important Primary Sources ** : = > ====__An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States__ is a 1913 book by American historian Charles A. Beard. It argues that the structure of the Constitution of the United States was motivated primarily by the personal financial interests of the Founding Fathers. More specifically, the author argued that the Constitutional Convention was attended by, and the Constitution was therefore written by, a "cohesive" elite seeking to protect its personal property (especially bonds) and economic standing.==== > > ==== The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. The Federalists promised to add a bill of rights to the Constitution to compromise with Anti-Federalists. As a result, Federalists succeeded in ratifying the Constitution. ====
 * PS1. Charles Beard: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
 * PS2. Hamilton, Madison, Jay: The Federalist Papers



=** √Essential Questions ** : = > > ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">--> The Articles of Confederation effectively handled the international relationship with other nations and successfully stabilized political and social structure of the Unites State. With the victory of George Washington, the U.S. government was able to have favorable negotiation with Britain through successfully dealing with Britain during <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">Treaty of Paris at 1783. The congress established a policy for selling and surveying western lands through Land Ordinance of 1785, which also contributed to the nation's public education. ==== > ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;"> However, Shays' Rebellion on January 1787 showed that Articles of Confederation didn't effectively control their domestic problems. In addition, the Articles of Confederation were not able to handle huge debt and inflation of currency. Most importantly, the Articles of Confederation were not capable of solving problems of lacking of unity among states and boundary disputes. It did not possess power to enforce taxation to each state and absence of judiciary system and executive branch in government made hard to raise troops and stably run the nation. ==== > > > > ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">--> Charles A. Beard, one of the most famous “revisionist” and the progressive historians, created a lasting controversy in the early 20th century by asking what were the economic interests of the nation’s Founders. In An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of United States (1913), Beard concluded that Constitution was motivated by the economic self-interests of the framers, not by political idealism. Therefore, Charles A. Beard criticized some of the Founding Fathers of being selfish and greedy instead of being idealistic, patriotic or disinterested. ==== > ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> On the other hand, historians like John Fiske, Clinton Rossiter and Robert Brown viewed the Founding Fathers as heroes, arguing that the Founding Fathers greatly contributed to the formation of the Untied State's Constitution. Historian Richard Norris had an opinion that the Founding Fathers were sober realists, while historian Jackson Turner Main said the Founding Fathers' motives were simply on upper class' power and economic concerns. ====
 * Q1. Evaluate the extent to which the government under the Articles of Confederation was effective in solving the problems that confronted the new nation.
 * Q2. To what extent do you agree with Charles Beard in his assessment of the Founding Fathers and their agenda regarding the Constitution?

=** √Bibliography ** : =
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Textbook: __United States History (Preparing for the Advance Placement Examination)__ ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Painting by Howard Chandler Christy,1940 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scene_at_the_Signing_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States.jpg) ====
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">United States Congress image (<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">http://aspanational.wordpress.com/category/communications/ )
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">The Supreme Court of the United States image ( http://www.onlineparalegalprograms.com/resources/monumental-supreme-court-cases/ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.066em; line-height: 1.5;">The Federalist Paper image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Treaty of Paris image ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">YouTube (www.youtube.com) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Timetoast (www.timetoast.com) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">List of Presidents of the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidents_of_the_United_States) ====