3.5: A New Constitution

The U.S. Constitution departed from the Articles of Confederation in several key ways. The confederal system of the Articles was replaced with a federal one, increasing the national government’s power over the states. The goal was to make America less like a loose league of feuding countries and more like a unified nation. As the Founders put it in the Preamble to the Constitution, they wanted “to form a more perfect Union.”

Under the new constitution, Congress would have not one but two chambers: a House of Representatives and a Senate. This change resolved a dispute between large states and small states. Delegates from large states wanted proportional representation based on population. They argued that it was only fair for states with more citizens who would be subject to Congress’s laws to have more influence on those laws. Delegates from small states wanted to preserve the equal representation for states as outlined in the Articles. Otherwise, they feared they would be constantly outvoted by larger states and forced to accept laws that went against their interests. To settle this disagreement, Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth proposed the Great Compromise(sometimes called the Connecticut Compromise), calling for a proportional House according to population and an equal Senate with two senators per state.

Because representation in the House of Representatives would be determined by population, the Founders needed to decide how each state’s population would be counted. This process was complicated by the issue of slavery, as demonstrated in Figure 3.1 below. Delegates from Southern states wanted to count slaves when determining population. Doing so would increase their number of votes in the House, even though slaves themselves would not have the right to vote. Delegates from Northern states hoped that not counting slaves would hasten the end of slavery by reducing Southern states’ power in Congress. This dispute was resolved by the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted slaves as three fifths of a person for determining each state’s representation in the House.

The Three-Fifths Compromise is often misunderstood as an attempt to dehumanize slaves by declaring them to be worth less than free persons. This myth falls apart upon closer inspection: the more slaves counted for in states’ populations, the more influence Southern states would have in Congress to perpetuate slavery. The Three-Fifths Compromise had nothing to do with slaves’ moral worth and everything to do with the states competing for power. In this competition, slaves were merely political pawns.

Figure 3.1: Populations of the original 13 states, 1790 (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)

The new Congress also had lower thresholds for passing laws and amendments than it did under the Articles. Laws would now only require majority support in each chamber to pass. Amendments would only require the support of two thirds of Congress (or of a national constitutional convention) and three fourths of all states, as depicted in Figure 3.2 below. This ensured that no single state could block constitutional reform (the flaw which had made the Articles virtually unamendable). Additionally, Congress would be empowered to make all laws deemed “necessary and proper” for carrying out its duties, according to the necessary and proper clause in Article I.

Besides changing Congress, the Constitution also added an independent chief executive—the president—and an independent Supreme Court. Unlike the weak executives under the Articles who were chosen by and subservient to Congress, the new presidents would be chosen by an Electoral College and have a set of powers granted by the Constitution. Likewise, the Supreme Court would consist of judges appointed for life with the authority to settle disputes between the states. Both the presidency and the Supreme Court were included to prevent the problems under the Articles that had been caused by Congress’s inability to enforce its laws, respond quickly to crises, and pacify squabbling states.

Figure 3.2: Methods of amending the U.S. Constitution