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Who proposed the Virginia Plan?
Edmund Randolph
What is the Electoral College?
The US system for electing the president based on state electors.
What defines a republic?
A government where citizens rule through elected representatives.
How many states were needed to approve the Articles of Confederation?
13 states
What are The Federalist Papers?
Essays supporting the Constitution, written by Jay, Madison, and Hamilton.
What are the powers of the legislative branch?
Lawmaking branch of government.
1) collecting taxes
2)coining money
3) regulating trade
4) declare war and “raise and support armies,”
5) making national laws
What was Shays's Rebellion?
A movement by angry farmers to close courthouses to avoid debt charges.
Who proposed the Connecticut/Great Compromise?
Roger Sherman
What is federalism?
The division of powers between national and state governments.
What is the veto power?
The President's ability to reject laws passed by Congress.
Who was the English enlightenment thinker who spoke about natural rights (life, liberty, and property)?
John Locke
What was the purpose of the Bill of Rights?
To protect individual rights.
What established a single Northwest Territory with protections for settlers' rights?
The Northwest Ordinance
Who were the Federalists?
Supporters of the new Constitution, including Washington, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, and Jay.
What was the first state to approve the Constitution?
Deleware
What were the Articles of Confederation and what did they establish as the new governing body of the US?
America’s first constitution, signed November 15, 1777, placed a strong focus on giving power to state governments over the national/federal government. The Continental Congress was no more and the Confederation Congress was now the governing body of the United States.
What was the Enlightenment movement focused on?
Enlightenment movement focused on knowledge, reason, and science influencing the Constitution.
What was the Great Compromise?
An agreement for a bicameral legislature based on population and equal state representation.
What are checks and balances?
A system to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful.
What is a distinctive feature of the US government?
The separation of powers between national and state governments.
What were the differences between North and South over slavery?
Slavery was an economic issues as well as a moral issue. The Revolutionary War brought attention to the contradiction between the American battle for liberty and the practice of slavery. Between 1776 and 1786, 11 states (not Georgia or South Carolina) had outlawed or heavily taxed the importation of enslaved people.
Although slavery was not a major source of labor in the North, it existed and was legal in all the Northern states. However, many individuals and groups began to work to end the institution of slavery, including the Quakers in Pennsylvania, who became the first American antislavery society in 1774. Between 1783 and 1804, CT, RI, NY, and NJ passed laws that gradually ended slavery, yet free African Americans faced discrimination like not being able to vote, being barred from many public places, and children being forced to attend separate schools.
In the southern states, economies almost completely relied on slave labor for agricultural production; many Southerners feared their economy could not survive without slavery. This meant that it was easier for them to overlook or justify the use of slaves as they had been doing for generations prior to the revolution. This wasn’t true for all southerners however, as some began freeing individual slaves and some state governments, like Virginia, passed laws encouraging manumission (the freeing of individual enslaved persons).
Describe the responsibilities of each branch of the US Government.
Legislative- Makes the laws (House of Reps and the Senate)
Executive- Enforces the laws and ensure compliance (headed by the President)
Judicial- Interprets the laws and their effects
What caused the financial crisis after the Revolutionary War?
1) The money printed during the Revolutionary War had become practically worthless. WHY?
-UNABLE TO COLLECT TAXES both the Continental Congress and the states had printed their own paper money.
-No gold or silver backed up these bills.
-While the value of the bills plummeted, the prices of food and other goods soared. (Inflation)
2)Fighting the war left the Continental Congress with a large debt.
-The Congress borrowed money from American citizens and foreign governments, and Revolutionary soldiers were still owed pay for military service.
3) To help combat this issue, Congress established a department of finance and placed Robert Morris as its head. Morris’s plan to fix the financial crisis was to place a 5% tax on imported goods. Morris’s plan was shot down two seperate times because people weren't ready to accept a national tax, so the financial crisis worsened.
DAILY DOUBLE! What was the Three-Fifths Compromise?
Part of the Great Compromise addressed how the enslaved were to be counted in a state’s population. Southern states wanted to include enslaved Africans in their population count to gain delegates in the House of Representatives. Northern states objected to this idea because enslaved people were legally considered property. Some delegates from Northern states argued that enslaved laborers, as property, should be counted for the purpose of taxation but not representation. However, neither side considered giving enslaved African Americans the right to vote.
Once again, compromise won out. The delegates of the Constitutional Congress settled on the 3/5ths compromise, that each enslaved person was to count as three-fifths of a free person for both taxation and representation.
Who presided over the Constitutional Convention?
George Washington