Creating a Just Right Government

Independent Citizens Seek Awesome Government

Even during the American Revolution, the colonists had to start planning for their independent government. You need a government to fight a war, let alone win one. When the colonial revolutionaries declared independence from Britain, they faced a problem: What kind of central government should they have? They’d lived for years under British rule, and they had lots of complaints.
Now they would create a federal
government from scratch, and they
had a few requirements.

Independent Citizens Seek Awesome Government

Their experience under heavy-handed British rule left the newly independent Americans a little bit skittish. Basically, they wanted a federal government that couldn’t do much with most of the power left to individual states. They started by drafting a document called the Articles of Confederation. A confederation is a group of individuals united together for a purpose—in this case, the 13 states that had been British colonies before the war. The Articles of Confederation took four years to pass, and it explained how the 13 states would be governed as a union of states. Here are the basics:

• Each state was independent and had its own government.

• Each state would send representatives to the “Congress of the Confederation,” a lawmaking body.

• Congress was the only branch of government. (No president or courts.)

• In Congress, each state got one vote.

A Rocky Start

On one hand, the Articles of Confederation had qualities that citizens appreciated. Because the Articles set up a weak government, states got to keep their power and independence (which they were afraid to lose). No strong, central government could tell them what to do. It was also a chance to experience unity and function as an independent nation.

However, there were problems. The states had interests that were so dissimilar that it was hard even to ratify the Articles. It took four years, with a war going on! The Articles gave Congress the power to pass laws about certain things—but not to enforce those laws. Congress could not recruit a military to protect the new nation. Instead, it had to ask the states to supply soldiers. Congress also relied on the states for money because it did not have the power to collect taxes. And in order to change the Articles, every single state had to agree. These and other problems meant that, in general, citizens felt like the relationship… er, the government, wasn’t working.

Lots of Differences

With thirteen different states, there was no easy solution. Here’s why:

• States had different needs. For example, some states depended on fishing, while others mostly grew crops. States had different security needs: some worried about unrest among free laborers, others about enslaved uprisings, and others about struggles over territory with tribal nations in their western reserves.

• States had different sizes. Some states had many people; others had few. Some states had small enslaved populations and other states had huge enslaved populations.

• People had different opinions. Some people feared a stronger central government, while others thought it was necessary.
That last one was especially troublesome. Many people feared they would lose their freedom if a central government had too much power. Others were tired of the weak government created under the Articles of Confederation and felt like nothing would ever get done if there was not someone like a president in charge.

Let's Fix This Thing

Ordinary people debated these issues in taverns, in newspapers, and around kitchen tables. Then, in 1787, representatives from every state (except Rhode Island) met in Philadelphia to fix the Articles. This meeting came to be known as the Constitutional Convention because they ended up doing more than just fixing the articles—they wrote the Constitution! But agreeing on a new way to structure the government wasn’t easy.

Some states floated a new idea: What about a government with three branches? The new government could have a legislative branch with a congress to make laws, an executive branch led by a president to carry out laws, and a judicial branch with courts to interpret laws. It sounded good, but there was one major problem: How many votes would each state get in Congress?

Voting in congress: Yes, It's a Big Deal

Why? Because some states have a large population, and some have a small population. Under the Articles of Confederation, each state got one vote, no matter how many people it had. That meant people in more populated states had less influence in Congress. Naturally, states like Virginia thought that this wasn’t fair. They thought that they should get more votes because they had more people. Less populated states, however, thought it was a pretty good deal. Even though they were small, they had the same amount of power and influence as large states. They wanted to keep a one-vote-per-state system.

Battle of the Plans

Two different plans emerged- one favoring small states and one favoring large states. Can you tell which is which?

​The Great Compromise

The two sides—large states and small states—finally reached an agreement called the Great Compromise. Under the Constitution, Congress is divided into two chambers: the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the Senate, each state gets two votes, no matter what size it is. This favors small states. In the House of Representatives, the more people a state has, the more votes it gets. This favors large states. But this also led to another question: What determines a state’s population?

The Three-Fifths Compromise and Slavery

In order to determine representation for the House of Representatives, Congress had to determine how to count the population of each state. The question was raised about whether or not to count enslaved people as part of the population since a higher count meant more representatives. More representatives meant more power in government. The result was the Three-Fifths Compromise. This said that 3/5ths of the enslaved population would be counted towards a state’s population. By counting enslaved people, the South gained much more power in Congress than they would have had by counting just free persons. This power let them control national laws and expand slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. And when the issue of slavery in the United States was debated, the Founders’ debate got intense again. In the end, they chose to continue to allow slavery in order to maintain unity among states and profit from the labor of the enslaved.

The Constitution established a country that would create an incredible opportunity for many citizens, but ensuring that promise is equally available for all is an ongoing job for “we the people.”