US Constitution

Image Gateway:  September 17, 1787

“Signing of the Constitution” by Howard Chandler Christy (1940).  View this key to the figures in the painting, which hangs in the US Capitol.  Where is John Dickinson?

Discussion Question

• What were the most significant compromises of the 1787 convention?  What were the gravest mistakes?

Timeline:  Forging a Constitutional Republic

• 1775 Lexington & Concord // Second Continental Congress
• 1776 Paine’s Common Sense // State constitutions
• 1776 Declaration of Independence
• 1781 Articles of Confederation
• 1781  Battle of Yorktown
• 1783  Treaty of Paris // Dickinson College charter
• 1786  Shays’ Rebellion
• 1787  Constitutional Convention // Founders’ Constitution
• 1789  Washington inaugurated in New York

---

“Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honours, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the Charter; let it be brought forth placed on the Divine Law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.” 

–Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

 

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

–Miles’ Law (Rufus Miles, Jr.)

---

Electoral College

Sen. Abraham Baldwin of Georgia made one of the earliest known references to “electoral colleges” in Lancaster Intelligencer, April 9, 1800

“The delegates took even longer to decide on the form of the national executive branch. Should executive power be in the hands of a committee or a single person? How should its officeholders be chosen? On June 1, James Wilson moved that the national executive power reside in a single person. Coming only four years after the American Revolution, that proposal was extremely contentious; it conjured up images of an elected monarchy. The delegates also worried about how to protect the executive branch from corruption or undue control. They endlessly debated these questions, and not until early September did they decide the president would be elected by a special electoral college.” –YAWP, chap. 6, Sec. III

---

 

 

---

Original US Constitution (A Summary)

• Nearly 4,500 words
• Seven articles
  • Article I –Legislative
  • Article II –Executive
  • Article III –Judiciary
  • Article IV –States
  • Article V –Amendments
  • Article VI –Authority
  • Article VII –Ratification
• One fundamental charter

“Every word … decides a question between power & liberty.”
–James Madison, January 18, 1792

---