Rethinking the US Constitutional Convention

1. Rethinking the US Constitutional Convention Constitution Role Play: Who wasn’t invited

3. Difficulty in setting up a new nation • Importance and difficulty of writing a set of laws to govern a new nation • 1st time in human history that revolution waged for the purpose of having the governed involved in determining how they were to be governed- at least some of them

4. Some issues at the Convention • Slavery • Balancing power between big states and small states • Branches of government

5. Two key questions at our Convention • SHOULD SLAVERY BE ABOLISHED? • WHO SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE?

6. Chronology of Pre-Convention • Vocabulary • Short lecture on groups • Short video explaining the dynamics of race and class in the colonies • Receive roles and folder with position paper outline (speech outline) /answer questions • Alliance building • Speech writing and practice oral presentations • Create signs/ decorate

7. Role play chronology • Opening statements from each group. • Other groups may respond • Ask for formal proposals from groups • Voting on the proposals • Reflection writing

8. What do I need to turn in? • Vocabulary • Role play worksheets with questions and answers • Speeches • Reflection questions • Role play evaluation

9. Who was invited? • Male southern plantation owners • Northern merchants and bankers

10. What groups weren’t invited to the Constitutional Convention • White workers/indentured servants • Enslaved Africans • Free African Americans • White women • Native Americans

11. White workers/indentured servants • Worked in the colonies for four to seven years to pay for passage from Europe • Promised land and food when indenture was over

12. Enslaved African-Americans • African slavery develops in Virginia after fewer indentured servants were available to work tobacco fields • Slavery developed “one law, one person at a time.”

13. Free African –Americans • Very few in the south • Constantly in fear of being sold into slavery • Northern blacks able to speak out more freely than those in the south about injustices of slavery

14. Iroquois League • The “five tribes”- lived in what is now NY • Well planned • Based on Constitution that spelled out how to choose leaders and conduct business

15. White women in the colonies • “Remember the Ladies.” Abigail Adams • Women had no rights to their children, to property and when she married, all property went to her new husband.

16. What was decided at the real convention

17. Slavery and the Constitution • Slavery and the slave trade would be allowed to continue until at least 1808.( Article 1, Section 2 clause 3; Article 1, Section 9) • The word “slavery” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution • Fugitive slave law enacted (Article 4, Section 2)

18. THREE-FIFTHS COMPROMISE:slaves would be counted as 3/5’s of a person for purposes of taxation and representation for white population

19. Large states / small states • Lower House of Representatives: states would get representatives based on their population • Upper House: The Senate: Each state gets two representatives no matter how many people in the state.