"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." --The Preamble of the United States Constitution Click on the picture of the first page of the Constitution to see a larger image of it.

The Constitutional Convention created the most influential document in the history of the western world, the Constitution of the United States of America. The convention met from May to September of 1787 with the objective of amending the Articles of Confederation, which had caused severe economic troubles and extraordinary inflation. The poor economic conditions gave rise to the Shays Rebellion, a movement in which Daniel Shays led a group of bankrupt farmers in an attack on local government. Politicians and aristocrats felt that the rebellion was a large step in the direction of anarchy and demanded an immediate revision of the Articles.

Seventy-four delegates were appointed to the Convention, of which only 55 attended. Such men as Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, who was appointed president of the convention, were among them. Rhode Island was the only state not to attend; its politicians feared the strong central government that the convention set out to create. Patrick Henry of Virginia, like the people of Rhode Island, "smelled a rat" at the convention. Nevertheless, the Convention opened on the 25th of May, 1787, in the Philadelphia State House.

Most delegates quickly discarded the idea of amending the Articles of Confederation, realizing its inadequacy, and focused on forming a new system of government. A government with three branches - executive, legislative and judicial - was agreed upon, but the method of electing representatives became a controversy. Edmund Randolph proposed the "Virginia", or "Large State", plan, calling for a bicameral legislature with the number of representatives elected proportional to the size of the state’s population. William Patterson presented the "New Jersey", or "Small State", plan, which gave all states equal representation regardless of population or wealth. The large states would have greater power than the small states under the Virginia plan, but the small states sought to maintain the equality they enjoyed under the Articles with the New Jersey Plan. Like most decisions made at the convention, this situation was resolved in a compromise. The "Great Compromise", in which it was decided that the upper house of the legislature (the Senate) would have equal representation among the states, as favored by New Jersey, and the lower house (the House of Representatives) would be elected by population, favoring the large states, was passed on July 16th. The inclusion of slaves was determined in another compromise. A slave would be counted as three-fifths of a person in relation to population and taxation. Ironically, the fundamental question of how slavery could legally exist in a free country founded upon the belief that "all men are created equal" was never addressed.