Constitutional Convention: Debates, Compromises, and Ratification Explained

Well, hey there and welcome back to Himler History. Now, we've been going through unit three of the AP US 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 going to be saucy. So, if you're ready

to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. So, the Constitutional Convention. Now, the main question we're

going to 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 Himler's History subscribe button below. Now, I usually say this at the end, but nobody ever watches to the end.

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what you want, then get that clicky finger out and do your worst. Back to the video. So in light of Shea's

rebellion on which see the last video 55 delegates from the states met in 1787 for the constitutional convention in

Philadelphia. Now the purpose of this 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 to create an entirely new constitution in its place. Under the influence of a

powerful minority of men like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. and the delegates decided to flush that 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 biccameal legislature, which

means that there would be two houses in Congress. And within those two houses, 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 the big states would have more representatives and thus more influence. To which the smaller states rose up and

said, "Y'all so crazy." The small states favored a different plan for representation called the New Jersey

plan. And this plan called for a unicameal legislature in which every state had equal representatives. Now, of

course, this would favor the small states over the big states. If you can't see why these two plans would have been

contentious in the convention, let me try to explain it another way. Suppose three families decide to go out to

dinner and family A has three people, family B has three people, and family C has 10 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 get me some chalupas. And then family C is like, your mom's a chalupa. And thus a quarrel begins and

finally they decided to put their 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 10 people to please while A and B combined only have six and this 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 6 to 10 and baby we about to

have some Mongolian beats. So that was the main contention in the argument over representation at the convention except

way more than chalupas was at stake. It was actually like the balance of power for the new nation. So the debates grew

furious over this question of representation and finally through negotiation and collaboration and

compromise a new plan for representation was proposed which was called the great compromise. This plan provided for a

biccameal 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 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, were like, "Oh, heck yes, they should." And the northern states replied, "Isn't your whole system of

slavery built on the fact that the workers in your fields are not in fact human?" 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 going to benefit us to consider them human beings, what with our power and influence at stake. So, you know,

now I'm kind of joking about it, but this was an exceedingly contentious debate. Like, 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 were going to 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. Since this was happening right at the same time that slavery was being outlawed in the Northwest

Territories, 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. And it'll also 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 2-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 would choose a certain number of electors based on their population, and those electors

would then vote in 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 these 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 13 states had to agree to 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. 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 J, 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.

And 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. And 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 Federalist

won this battle. Partly, they won by persuasion, and they were simply more organized. And partly they won by

conceding to the anti-federalists that once the constitution was ratified, they would add a 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 midyear 1788, the requisite nine states had ratified the constitution and it was now the

governing document of the land. All right, that's what you need to know about unit 3, topic eight of the AP US

history curriculum. And if you want help getting an A in your class and a five on your exam in May, then click right here

and grab review pack. If you want me to keep making these videos, then go ahead and subscribe and I shall oblige. I'm a

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