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U.S. History 1492-1877 4: The Constitutional Convention 148 Views


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Description:

Welcome to the convention where you can wig out over all things constitutional, ConstiCon. Yugh, that sounded a lot better in our heads.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

The Constitution of the United States of America it sounds like [Constitution holding thumbs up]

00:08

a big deal that's because it is not to give it a big head or anything for about

00:12

ten years post-revolution America was loosely held

00:16

together by a document called the Articles of Confederation the articles [Articles of confederation document appears]

00:20

tried hard but they just couldn't hack it

00:22

they created a federal government that was super weak like lifting paper clips [Document picking up weights at the gym]

00:26

there was a stream so 55 delegates were sent from the original 13 colonies well

00:33

nobody came from Rhode Island because they were too busy United bein Rhode

00:36

Island anyway those 55 delegates came together for what was called the

00:40

Constitutional Convention guess what they did there yeah they convened and [Delegates at a convention]

00:45

then they partied like it was 1787 and no doubt but they also conceived and

00:50

wrote the Constitution well this was not easy and many families the debate over [Man chases constitution]

00:56

where to go for dinner can get pretty ugly the gluten free faction opposes the [Family fighting]

01:00

pro spaghetti faction the barbecue advocates come to blows with vegetarians

01:04

and the fact that everyone's hungry makes everything worse now imagine 55

01:09

semi strangers trying to decide how to govern a nation total nightmare people [Strangers fighting in a cloud of dust]

01:14

one of the biggest sticking points was whose turn it was to go get the bagels

01:19

in the morning no wait actually the question of congressional representation

01:22

was probably a bigger deal in other words delegates did a lot of bickering

01:25

over the number of Representatives each state would have in Congress in one [Delegates in discussion]

01:30

corner we had the advocates of proportional representation or [Man bouncing in corner of boxing ring]

01:33

representation based on population who championed this plan and generally the

01:38

states with the most people surprise surprise in the other corner we have the

01:42

advocates of equal representation who wanted each and every state to have the

01:47

same number of Representatives no matter how tiny their population was little

01:51

states with fewer people were of course the ones that were down with this game

01:55

plan so basically everybody just wanted what was best for themselves and we [Men begin fighting in boxing ring]

01:59

think they'd come to some kind of compromise or something like maybe there [Man shoves fighter]

02:03

could be two congressional bodies what do you think one with representatives

02:07

elected according to population and one with an equal number of Delegates per

02:11

state oh wait that's exactly the compromise

02:15

they made and what we live with today with our modern house of representatives

02:20

elected by population and the Senate where each state gets two of them not

02:25

only that it was a compromise so great that they actually called it the great [Great Compromise document appears]

02:28

compromise what a great title yeah I guess that we could have done better

02:33

compromise wouldn't have had the same ring to it [Man looking sad while sitting down]

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