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The Constitutional Convention: Executive Summary

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The Constitutional Convention was initially an effort to amend the Articles of Confederation, and the purpose of the meeting was to create a whole new government (Shultz, 2014). The Convention was secret and was drawn out through the summer of 1787 (Shultz, 2014). There were many divisions in the preliminary plans and the Virginia Plan, and the New Jersey Plan was the largest (Shultz, 2014). James Madison headed the Virginia Plan's agenda, and the plans he laid out were 1) do away with the Articles of Confederation 2) create two houses within Congress 3) create a government which Congress had the power to veto the actions of the states (Shultz, 2014). He also felt that population would determine membership in Congress and this would give an …show more content…

While this may have angered people, without some control over taxes the United States may have collapsed early.

Divisions formed almost immediately before the ratifications of the Constitution (Shultz, 2014). The Federalist were supporters of the Constitution. The Federalist were in support of a stronger government and felt that a stronger government was better than the confederation of semi-sovereign states (Encyclopedia.com, 2016). The Federalist believed that once the Federal Government had more power the problems with the nation's debt would be handled better (Diffen.com, n.d.).

The anti-federalist was against the ratification of the Constitution and did not want the government to have more control over them (Diffen.com, 2016). They were also against having a president out of fear of tyranny and preferred individual states to handle their affairs (Diffen.com, 2016). They did not feel comfortable with ratifying the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was added (Diffen.com).

By 1795, the two political parties were clearly defined (Shultz, 2014). The democratic- republicans (which consisted mostly of anti-federalist) and the Federalists (Shultz,

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