compromises US constitution

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Analyze and explain the compromises leading up to the ratification of the US constitution.

In 1781, the United States, after having gotten its independence from Britain, created a new constitution. This new constitution was extremely well thought out and it is still pretty much the same one as used nowadays. However, creating this new constitution was not an easy path. In the summer of 1776, a committee was appointed by Congress to create this new constitution. There were many compromises that lead up to the ratification of the US constitution, most of these compromises were power-motivated. After having been a colony, no state wanted to be controlled by any other state. So they did all that they could to make sure that the power was well divided so that every state would be equal.

Even though the constitution was redrafted many times, there were some points that were always present before ratifying the constitution.  Some of these points at issue were how much power to allow the central government, how many representatives in Congress to allow each state, and how these representatives should be elected (directly by the people or by the state legislators). When it was put forth for the states to ratify it, still many worried that without further restraint a central government would become tyrannical. In order to solve that problem, a Bill of Rights was added in order to state the rights of people. The Bill of Rights was a document created in 1791 that stated 10 rights of every citizen. This helped most of the states ratify the constitution because it made them feel safer to have their rights written down and signed in official paper.

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Another issue was how many seats each state would have in the Congress. This was an important decision because a state with more seats had more power than a state with fewer seats. In order to decide how many seats each state would have, James Madison provided the Virginia Plan. It suggested that Congress should have two houses, each based on size of the population. The smaller states feared they would lose influence under the plan, because since they had a smaller population, they would have fewer seats and consequently less power. To oppose the Virginia Plan, William Patterson produced ...

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