Pros And Cons Of The American Constitution

The constitution of the United States is an insightful and revolutionary idea of how a government should be practiced in order to prevent a greedy, corrupt form of government from establishing and taking over its people. The US government is founded on the principle that it works for its people, meaning that whatever is legislated is meant only for the benefit of the American people. However, the Constitution is at this point flawed due to the fact that many of its proclamations are vague and outdated, and has to be left to interpretation as to what the framers truly intended of it. This is dangerous because it further divides the nation when Americans believe in different forms of what is constitutionally righteous, and this may start a civil

In Paul Finkelman’s article “How the Civil War Changed the Constitution” shows how the Civil War affected the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. One of the main reasons for the Civil War was slavery. The constitution however, did not use the word slavery in their constitution. I found that to be very interesting because its almost like Americans were ashamed of their behavior. Why were the Northern’s more against using the word slavery than southerners?

Then the issue on if slaves should be considered population for taxation purposes but not for representation, meaning that their existence was only fought for when the nation benefited from it. They came to the conclusion that there should be a three-fifth ration for both taxation and representation when it came to the existence and acknowledgments of slaves as

The Constitution of the United States created in 1787 provided the framework for an egalitarian society where every free white male had equal representation and therefore promoted social happiness. However, in 1787 there were many groups of people in the newly formed United States of America that were not addressed, or even disenfranchised by the new Constitution. This included slaves, free women, and American Indians. Whereas free white males had their liberties fully expressed by the constitution including fair and equal representation, social happiness should include every group within the United States as every person in the States should have a say in government.

Slavery does exist in the United States. It did exist in the states before the adoption of this Constitution” - Daniel Webster is not denying the differences between both parts and their complaints: “There are lists of grievances produced by each…” - Webster urged strengthening of laws to capture runaway slaves and that led to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850: “there has been found at the North, among individuals and among Legislators of the North, a disinclination to perform, fully, their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who have escaped into the free

You can see this in Document B, wherein 1858 Lincoln says this: “I have no purpose . . . to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists . . .” Later on in the same document he also states, “There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights . . . in the Declaration of Independence- the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” While Lincoln was running for president, he promised to leave slavery alone in the South, but he also stays true to his personal morals through his time, that slavery

The founders wanted the two states to join the Union to create a more vigorous government; because the founders wanted to keep the support of the Southern delegates, they allowed the Atlantic slave trade to keep operating by allowing no law to ban the Atlantic slave trade until 1808. Therefore, the founders didn’t abolish slavery because they thought that if they took action to eliminate slavery, the Southern delegates wouldn’t allow South Carolina and Georgia to join the Union, which would have been an unfavorable outcome for the nation. They didn’t want to risk that because the Southern delegates wouldn’t agree to the Constitution, the founders created and wouldn’t let the states join the

This paper will look at two very important issues framing the antebellum period, “Was the abolition of slavery constitutional” and “Was secession constitutional.” I believe that the abolition of slavery was not constitutional. When the Constitution was written in 1787, specific issues pertaining to slavery were mentioned in the document. This is an important point because although the word slavery is not stated, it is clear by the language and the specificity used, the architectures of the Constitution were referring to slaves.

The constitution was a collaboration project where several different people and ideologies worked together to form a fair and just government in the colonies. Due to the large number of different ideas battling for dominance within the formation of this new government, compromise had to be made. This level of compromise allows the modern interpreter to find the existence, both in large and small ways, of the ongoing battle in regard to individual and civil rights in every part of the document. These contributors had very different ideas about the concept of ‘rights’ and more specifically, their ideal level of priority within a society. Locke, Rousseau, Paine, Dickinson, Madison and Blackstone all had varying ideas of what this balance should

One issue they faced concerned how they would count slaves for legislative purposes. The free North states thought slaves shouldn’t be counted at all because it would give the slave states an unfair representation due to the high slave population. However, the South disagreed for they feared the Northern states would have a substantial population advantage if the slaves were not counted. They worried that the Northern states would use such an advantage against them to regulate or even abolish slavery. To appease the slavery states they enacted the Three-Fifths Compromise.

One of the compromises made in the Constitutional Convention is the three-fifths compromise. In this compromise, the southerners wanted to add slaves to the population of the state they lived in. If slaves were included in their state’s population, that state would be able to add more representatives in the House of Representatives. Northerners did not agree with that statement because slaves did not have the right to vote. After the delegates compromised, they agreed that only three-fifths of the slave’s population would be counted into the state’s population.

In American society and politics, the news of liberty and freedom made its way to slaves and former slaves. However, Federalists and Antifederalists (Democratic-Republicans), those who supported the ratification of the Constitution and those who did not, as well as northerners and southerners disagreed on the role of slaves in society. James Madison stated that “the institution of slavery and its implications formed the line of discrimination.” The debate over how to represent slaves in government resulted in the Three-Fifths compromise, (also known as the Three-Fifths Clause and Article 1 Section 2 in the Constitution), which

Although, this country holds a proud belief in life liberty and the pursuit of happiness the constitution and it clause contradict it. The grand convention of 1787 was the initiation of slavery because it permitted slavery in the country. The delegates in that convention left clear that their true intention was to have land liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness, but to their own people and not slaves. As George Carlin once said, “Think of how it all started: America was founded by slave owners who informed us, "All men are created equal.

Ultimately, the U.S. Constitution was pro-slavery because there wasn 't anything in it that was overly anti-slavery; slavery was being supported. I think that it makes sense to have the Constitution be pro-slavery because the country was left in a chaotic state after the Articles of Confederation failed and it needed to become united fast. To quickly unite the country, the Constitution needed everyone’s support and help, which couldn 't have been received without slavery. The large slave states wouldn 't have ratified the Constitution if slavery was going to be abolished

Are “all men created equal”? Why did the Constitution allow slavery to continue? The framers of the Constitution allowed slavery to continue because of political, economic, and social issues. They wanted their nation to be unified and the number of states to stay intact. They wanted to secure wealth and slavery was a great part of their economy.