After the disaster known as the Articles of Confederation, public officials started to work to make the U.S. Constitution, the new framework for the American Republic.
During the Constitutional Convention, the Great Compromise, which was a compromise between the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan, was established. This plan included a bicameral Congress, which means two houses. The House of Representatives is the Lower Chamber, while the Senate is the Upper Chamber. Representation in the House is decided by each state’s population, while each state gets two Senators.
The Electoral College was also added as part of the Great Compromise. It is not an actual college. The electors are the true votes for who becomes president. The electors (usually) vote based on the popular vote. It is a winner-take-all system, so whichever candidate gets the most electoral votes in a given state wins all of the electoral votes for said state.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was how enslaved African Americans would be counted for representation in the House. Slaveowners in the South wanted their slaves to be counted in order to receive additional representation in the House, while the North did not. This compromise was made that enslaved people would be counted as three-fifths of a person. It was agreed to postpone the decision of whether Congress could ban the importation of slaves until 1808.
The first ten amendments of the Constitution, also known as the Bill of Rights, were added to appease the anti-Federalists, who feared that the Constitution would impede individual liberties. This was argued in Brutus 1, a paper written by anti-Federalists. You will learn more about this in Unit 3, which is heavily based on the Bill of Rights.
The process to amend the Constitution was also created here. Article V of the Constitution lays out this process as needing either a two-thirds majority in both houses OR a proposal from two-thirds of the state legislatures, with final ratification from three-fourths of the states.
Despite all these compromises, there were still some matters that were left unsolved. For instance, the role of the national and state governments as well as rights for individuals. In certain contexts, such as when it comes to who gets to make a certain law; the federal government or the states? The Tenth Amendment reserves rights not listed to the federal government for the states to have. There have also been debates about government surveillance as a result of 9/11, as well as the role of government in public education. Furthermore, not everybody agrees with certain decisions in the Great Compromise. Some people believe the Electoral College isn’t completely democratic, as it doesn’t allow for a true popular vote in presidential elections, especially the winner-takes-all system.