The Articles of Confederation
Under the Articles of Confederation, if Congress voted in favor of a new law, it needed to achieve this additional step before becoming the law.
Approval from 9 of the 13 states.
This is the number of delegates (men) sent from the States to write a new Constitution.
55 delegates
The Congress is the branch of government responsible for what?
Lawmaking/legislating
The Constitution established the office of the President to head this branch of government
The Executive
The bill of rights is a set of constitutional amendments listing some of the rights of US citizens. There are ____ amendments in the bill of rights.
10
The Constitution we have now has 3 branches of Government. The Articles of Confederation only had one. Name one of the two branches of government left out by the Articles.
Executive, Judiciary
This is the name for the group of people who supported ratification of the Constitution.
Federalists
These are the names of the two 'houses' of the United States legislature
The House of Representatives, the Senate
The President is subject to reelection every ___ years
Four
The first Amendment guarantees the rights to Petition, Press, Assembly, Religion and ______.
Speech
Northwest Ordinance.
This founding father and future president was seen as the "Father of the Constitution"
James Madison
The Great Compromise was a way of settling the competing Virginia and New Jersey plans. What 2 things did the great Compromise do?
Establish a bicameral legislature with a House and a Senate - the House would be apportioned based on state population, the Senate would include 2 Senators from each state, regardless of population.
The President must meet these 2 criteria to be eligible to run for the office of President
Must be a natural born US Citizen, must be 35 or older.
The Second Amendment gave US citizens the right to bear arms. Why was this important to the founders?
The US Army was comprised of independent militias, who were citizen fighters who needed to own their own weapons
The power to tax
The draft of the Constitution was approved by the 55 delegates, and then had to be ratified by individual States. What is the name for the series of newspaper articles that argued in favor of ratification?
The Federalist Papers.
One of the notorious compromises at the Constitutional Convention was the 3/5ths compromise. What did this agreement do?
The 3/5ths compromise was an agreement to count enslaved African Americans as 3/5ths of a person for the purpose of calculating states' populations for Congressional representation.
The electoral college
Future Amendments to the Constitution expanded rights. Name one Amendment that expanded constitutional rights in some way
13th Amendment: ended slavery
14th Amendment: gave citizenship to former slaves
15th Amendment: expanded the right to vote to MEN of all races
19th Amendment: gave women the right to vote
One of the reasons the Founders chose to scrap the Articles in favor of a new Constitution was an economic depression. A mob of angry farmers rebelled in Massachusetts in 1786, an act known now as ________.
Shay's Rebellion
One major disagreement at the Constitutional Convention revolved around the institution of slavery in the United States. The delegates agreed to permit continuing slavery, but decided to limit what?
The the importation of humans from Africa after the year 1808.
Until the 20th century, the number of Representatives in the House of Representatives continued to grow, as the Constitution originally states that each member of the house should represent ________ people.
30,000
The president wasn't term-limited by the Constitution until the middle of the 20th century. Which US president was the only one to serve more than 2 terms?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)
Some of the rights established in the Bill of Rights were a direct response to colonial abuses by the British government. Name one British Act that the Bill of Rights protects against.
The Quartering Act, the Intolerable Acts