Constitutional Convention: Debates, Compromises, and Ratification Explained

Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler’s  History. We’ve been going through unit 3 of   the AP U.S. History curriculum, and in  the last video we looked at the first   constitution of the United States, which is to  say, the Articles of Confederation. We ended  

with the failure of that document and so in  this video and the next we’re going to look   at how that failure led America to create a  new Constitution. This video will deal with   the Constitutional Convention, and the next  one, the Constitution itself, and oh baby,  

it’s gonna be saucy. So if you’re ready to  get them brain cows milked, let’s get to it. So, the Constitutional Convention. The  main question we’ll be trying to answer   in this video is as follows: What were  the differing ideological positions on  

the structure and function of the  newly conceived federal government? And now this portion of the video is sponsored  by the Heimler’s History subscribe button below.   I usually say this at the end, but nobody ever  watches to the end, so let me say it here. If  

you’ve been finding these videos helpful and  you want me to keep making them, then go ahead   and subscribe. It’s like a signal to me that  you’re being helped and want me to keep going.   If that’s what you want, then get that clicky  finger out and do your worst. Back to the video.

So in light of Shays’s Rebellion,  on which see the last video,   fifty five delegates from the states met in 1787  for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.   The purpose of the gathering was to shore up  the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation,  

but right as the convention opened, the pressing  question became whether they should try to dress   up the turd of a constitution they already  had or create an entirely new constitution   in its place. And under the influence of a  powerful minority of men like James Madison  

and Alexander Hamilton, the delegates decided  to flush the turd and create a new Constitution   that afforded the federal government more  power than it had under the Articles. Now, once that was established, one of the main  debates they had is over representation in the new  

federal government, like, how would the voices of  the people be represented? And there were two main   proposals for this: the Virginia Plan and the New  Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan called for a strong   centralized state, and a bicameral legislature  which means there would be two houses in Congress.  

And within those two houses, the states would  have representatives based on population. Now,   Virginia, as you may know, was a big state  with a large population, and so a plan like   this very much appealed to the big states  because if they are represented in the  

federal government by population that means  big states would have more representatives,   and thus more influence. To which the smaller  states rose up and said, you so crazy. The small states favored a different plan  for representation called the New Jersey  

Plan. This plan called for a unicameral  legislature in which every state had equal   representatives. Now of course, this would  favor the small states over the big states. And if you can’t see why these two plans  would have been contentious in the convention,  

let my try to explain it another way. Suppose  three families decide to go out to dinner. Family   A has three people, Family B has three people,  and Family C has ten people. Now suppose families   A and B both have a hankering for Mexican food,  while Family C hates Mexican food and wants to  

go for Chinese food. And then further suppose that  these families can’t come to a compromise and they   start to fight. Families A and B are like, I got  to have me some chalupas. Family C is like, your   mom’s a chalupa. And a quarrel begins. Finally,  they decided to put the dinner choice to a vote.

If they decide to have equal votes, then A  and B are going to win because they both want   Mexican and there are only three votes.  And this will be untenable to family C   because they have ten people to please  while A and B combined only have six,  

and that means chalupas. But if they decide to let  everyone have a vote, then even A and B combined   can’t beat Family C because it’ll be six to ten,  and baby we bout to have some Mongolian Beef. So that was the main contention in the  argument over representation at the convention,  

except way more than chalupas were at  stake, it was actually the balance of   power for the new nation. So the debates grew  furious over this question of representation,   and finally through negotiation,  collaboration, and compromise,  

a new plan for representation was proposed  which was called the Great Compromise. This   plan provided for a bicameral legislature,  which again, means two houses. The first house,   the House of Representatives, would represent  the states by population. The second house,  

the Senate, would represent each state  equally by giving each state two votes. Now, with that fight settled, the delegates  moved on to another contentious battle over   representation which was fought between slave  states and free states. The main question was  

whether the enslaved population of the  South (especially) would be counted for   purposes of representation in the House  of Representatives. The southern states,   of course, said, Oh heck yes they should. And  the northern states replied, Isn’t your whole  

system of slavery built on the idea that the  workers in your fields are not in fact humans?   Well yeah. So why would they count for  representation if they’re not human and   therefore not citizens. Well son, you see, in  this particular case it’s gonna benefit us to  

consider their humanity, what with our power  and influence being at stake, so you know… Now I’m kind of joking about it, but this  was an exceedingly contentious debate. Many   delegates were worried that the South would  walk away from the convention if they said  

no to counting enslaved people for the purposes  of representation. And the reason they feared   that is because the southern delegates  TOLD them that’s what they would do. And   so another set of compromises was born. First  was the Three-Fifths Compromise which said that  

three fifths of the enslaved population could  be added to the population for purposes of   representation. And since this was happening right  at the same time that slavery was being outlawed   in the Northwest Territory, southern delegates  wanted more assurances that slavery wouldn’t  

be messed with. And so the convention agreed to  take the ban of slavery off the table until 1808. And there were many more compromises, but those  are some of the major ones. It’s also going to be   important for you to know the outcomes of their  debates on how voting for national representatives  

would take place. Members of the House of  Representatives would be voted in directly   by the people for two year terms. Members of the  Senate would be elected by state legislatures for   six year terms. And the election of the newly  conceived executive branch, which is to say,  

the president, would occur by a process governed  by the electoral college. This meant that the   president would be elected not by the people, but  by the states. Each state chose a certain number   of electors based on their population, and those  electors would then vote for the president. And  

that can be potentially confusing, but what you  need to take away from that is this: the delegates   argued that the election of the president should  be removed from the hands of the people and put   into the hands of a small group of people who were  uniquely suited to choose the right candidate.

Now with all those items hammered out, the  delegates agreed that in order for this new   Constitution to become the governing document  of the new American nation nine out of thirteen   states had to agree on it, and that agreement  is what we call ratification. And as soon as  

the convention adjourned, two opposing sides  quickly formed on the ratification issue:   the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.  The Federalists, who were mostly urban and   commercial type folks, went to their various  states and tried to persuade the people to  

ratify the new Constitution. To this end three  of the Federalist luminaries—Alexander Hamilton,   James Madison, and John Jay—pumped out an  insane amount of essays published anonymously   in newspapers that explained the nature of  the Constitution and why the states needed  

to ratify it. These essays collectively  became known as the Federalist Papers. The Anti-Federalists went back to their  states and tried to persuade the folks   NOT to ratify the Constitution because it  simply invested too much power into the  

hands of the central government at the expense  of the states. One of their main problems with   the Constitution is that it had no provision for  the protection against the federal government’s   intrusion on individual liberties, which  is to say, there was no Bill of Rights.

Now it probably won’t surprise you to hear  that the Federalists won the battle. Partly   they won by persuasion—they were simply more  organized—and partly they they won by conceding   to the Anti-Federalists that once the Constitution  was ratified, they would add the Bill of Rights  

which both enumerated individual rights and  made provision to protect individuals and   states from the overreach of federal power.  And so by mid-year 1788 the requisite nine   states had ratified the Constitution and it  was now the governing document of the land.  

Okay that’s what you need to know about  Unit 3 Topic 8 of the AP U.S. History   curriculum. If you want help getting an  A in your class and a five on your exam   keep making these videos for you then go ahead  and subscribe and I shall oblige. Heimler out.