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Video for the Constitutional Convention

Added Aug 24, 2017 •

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why do we refer to our two tours two systems of Courts all right Secretary of State Saturday for sales with everything outside of America hi and welcome back mr. Raymond's Civics EOC Academy we're today we're going to be talking about the Constitutional Convention in 1787 particular we're going to focus on how the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation that we discussed last time we're by the convention delegates not last time we also talked about how Shay's Rebellion finally demonstrated to Americans that the Articles were just too weak and this leads us back to the same Benchmark we began last time which says to identify how weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation to the writing of the Constitution and this time we're going to focus more on the writing of the Constitution and just reminder teachers that this PowerPoint and lesson plans are available at Teachers Pay Teachers mr. Raymond's Civics EOC Academy set the convention took place four years after the end of the Revolutionary War in America was trying to rebuild after 8 of war the delegates at remember a delegate is a representative the delegates met in Philadelphia to the weaknesses the Articles of Confederation the 55 delegates representing 12 of 13 states now Rhode Island didn't send any Representatives Thailand a small state and this is the thing that's going to be coming up small states not happy the delegates met in the singing building in which Declaration of Independence was written and signed now rather than trying to fix the Articles of Confederation they scrapped it they figured we need to write a whole new one and start from scratch and to add legitimacy to this Gathering they chose hero of the Revolutionary War George Washington to head up to leave the convention so the delegates addressed three of the weaknesses pretty easily one of the first Powers they put into the new constitution was the power to from our last video you know what a mess it was that they didn't give themselves the power to text they had difficulties fighting but or they couldn't stop things like Shays Rebellion the states were broke they couldn't pay their soldiers this was a huge problem now next they created the three branches adding the executive and the judicial and remembered they had a legislative under the Articles the Continental Congress but since they had no one to enforce the law which is what the executive branch does and they had no to interpret or judge the law which is the judicial branch they added these two new branches Next Day established Klaus remember Commerce is to trade and this gave the central government the power to regulate foreign and Interstate parade would you been a big problem under the under the articles for member states were taxing other states and states were making deals with other countries and this was a big problem but some of the problems at the Constitutional Convention would need a little more compromise and one of the problems we discussed last was that under the Articles state had one vote in Congress and large states like Virginia and New York who had plate on a much bigger role during the Revolutionary War both in costs and losses they were not pleased with this arrangement true plans for the Congress being pushed one that would help the big States this was known as the Virginia Plan in which representation in a two house Congress they were going to change it to a two house Congress would be based on population  any other plan that came out was known as can you Jersey Plan which would have a one house Congress like they had on the the articles with equal votes per state and this was pushed by the small who are basically happy with the Congress as it was under the Articles of Confederation so a solution was arrived at known Great Compromise which created a two house congress with one based on population known as the House of Representatives and one known as the Senate with equal representation okay so here we see the house of reps and this made the big States happy end the Senate made the small states happy and still do today not this did more than just make the plates Happy by creating a two house legislature the delegates were dividing power further and this appealed to their human Tendencies towards separation of powers four-member Montesquieu separating the powers we will do an entire lesson on Congress later please share but it's important to remember that the Great Compromise solve the problem of one state one vote now as can be expected the change to the Articles of Confederation that cause the most anxiety was the creation of an executive after all having person with a lot of power in the form of a chief executive president sounded an awful lot like a king and remember fear of power is a central theme throughout this year but there was another beer at the convention and that was fear of the yes us I don't want to say the delegates were a bunch of snobs but they did consider themselves the elite and they were the elite you know this was a time when only a tiny percentage of people went to college most of the people were farmers these guys were definitely more I don't know enlightened than the vast majority of Americans and they were what person someone might be able to cause the people to elect some undeserving yet popular person to become someone who wouldn't do a good job but was popular with the people so they instituted a system for electing the president known as The Electoral the states would hold an election for the president and which the people would vote and this is known as the popular vote but afterwards people call collectors would gather to place the final vote for president in case of the people had messed up these electors would get together and count and each state would have a number of electors equal to their representatives in Congress so take for example Florida Florida 25 representatives in the house of reps and two senators giving them a total of 27 electors every state is guaranteed need at least three electors because each state has two senators and or guaranteed at least one representative in the house of reps so Estates like North Dakota with a very small population would have 3 electoral votes where is large the largest state with this California has five letters so there's a total of 538 electors today so a candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win sounds confusing right yes and and that was partly on purpose again to protect us from ourselves we're going to go over this again when we get to what ticks in election so if you didn't get it right there you're going to have another shot some people think we should get rid of it it's kind of part of our tradition the Electoral College just hit pause if you haven't been taking notes you've been taking notes right so let's review problems of the Articles no levying taxes check we changed no federal courts check no regulation of trade Jack no executive check too hard to a man door laws we haven't discussed that today but now laws only require a simple majority that is one more than 50% to pass that was a change from two thirds which was just really hard to get and amendments which were required a unanimous vote remember everyone agrees and it's really hard to get everyone to agree on anything and that was changed to two-thirds of Congress and 3/4 of the I'm going to do a whole lesson on amendments so we'll go over this again finally we have representation of States one vote stage was changed to a two house congress with a house of reps based on population and a senate with equal representation document was put together and written up by James Madison who's also known as the father of the Constitution and it was delegates but there were still some who were not happy about the new document and they refused to sign they thought it was too much power and a big fight was still ahead because the states would now be asked to ratify the Constitution and as hopefully you remember the states were reluctant to give up all this new power to the national government and that is where we'll pick up next time with ratifying the Constitution and it's going what political so we will see you next time be sure to subscribe and thanks for watching just a reminder teachers this PowerPoint as well lesson plans are available at Teachers Pay Teachers just search for mr. Raymond's EOC Academy and again thanks for

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