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Pros And Cons Of The Constitution

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All the states except one, Rhode Island, signed the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution was ratified in 1781. It was needed because it had made America’s Government, set basic laws, and had some important rights that it granted for its citizens . The Articles of Confederation was America’s first governing document, it was very weak and gave the states to much power and allowed them to act independently. In the Articles of Confederation gave Congress way to much power but since the states were so free it could not enforce anything. In 1787 the colonies had a convention where the delegates made a better document to support them. This document made three branches of government; legislative, executive, and judicial. They also …show more content…

The delegates from the smaller states like Rhode Island or Connecticut wanted the representatives for every state to be equal. The Connecticut Compromise had settled this argument by letting the bigger states to have more representatives in the House of Representatives but allowed equal representatives in the Senate. They also discussed slavery, which they had decided to have the states deal with it themselves, without agreeing on this the southern states might not have joined the Union. With this they decided that the slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person. In september of 1787 the final draft was completed and George Washington was the first person out of 39 to sign it. There were 55 delegates but some had already left and three refused to sign, only 9 states had to ratify it out of the 13. Those who supported the constitution were considered federalists and those who were against it were known as anti-federalists. Many states had hesitated to ratify it right away, a compromise was reached and some of the other states would sign if there would be amendments added. Finally George Washington was voted to office on April 30,

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