Politics
The Constitutional Convention is a major transition point in American history between the Revolutionary era and the birth of national republican government. The delegates who met in Philadelphia in 1787 not only fashioned a new form of government to replace the Articles of Confederation, but also submitted their handiwork to the citizens of the individual states for ratification. Long debates marked both stages of this process. On one side were ranged those who argued that survival depended on increasing the efficiency and strength of central government; their opponents, worried more about potential abuses, sought to reserve as much power as possible to the states, where government was closer to the people. The question of military force, in the form of an army, navy, and militia, was a central topic in these debates. In the end, compromise produced a uniquely American solution derived from colonial modifications of a European heritage: a federal system of checks and balances that divided responsibility between the states and the national government, a separation of the latter's powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and a clear subordination of the military to the elected government.
Key Points
- No consistency between state currencies
- No consistence between states on taxation and trade with each other and other countries
- States engaged in an endless war of economic discrimination against commerce from other states. Southern states battled northern states for economic advantage. The country was ill-equipped to fight a war--and other nations wondered whether treaties with the United States were worth the paper they were written on. On top of all else, Americans suffered from injured pride, as European nations dismissed the United States as "a third-rate republic."
- Compromises…..