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Outline the main aims of the ‘framers’ of the Constitution
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Outline the main aims of the ‘framers’ of the Constitution
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Outline the main aims of the ‘framers’ of the Constitution. (15)The first aim was revision. The framers of the constitution met in 1787 for the
purpose of revising the weak Articles of Confederation. The Articles denied the
national government of taxation did not provide a national judicial system and
didn’t allow the federal government the ability to enforce laws. Because of these
reasons, the framers decided to abandon the abandon all plans for the Articles of
Confederation framework in ratification and come up with an entirely new
document.
The second aim was cohesion. The framers wanted to compromise with the issue
of slavery. Even though the northing states had effectively abolished slavery
before 1970, southern states were reluctant to accept any plan of government
that involved abolishing slavery. Leaders from the north and the south had to
compromise for that sake of national unity, hence the framers approved article 1
section 9 clause 1 of the constitution which mentioned that the slave trade would
not be abolished before 1808.
The third aim was representation. For a representative democracy to work there
must be reasonable measures of taxation. There were many different plans that
different framers put forward, many put ford to support federal interests as in the
case of Alexander Hamilton’s and others put ford state interest plans, like Charles
Pinckney’s plan which was a more elaborate form of the Virginia plan. Eventually
federal and state interests were appeased through the introduction of a system of
checks and balences. The south gained a victory by receiving more congressional
recognition because of its slave population, each member of which was counted
as three fifths of a person! The north benefited from this because taxes levied on
the south made up for the presence of the slave population, which was 40% of
the south’s population at the time, the tax payments were quite a lot.
Finally there was the aim of limitation. Having experienced tyrannical British rule
during the colonial years the framers did not want to release to much power to
central government. The Framers wanted to limit the prohibitions on the federal
government which the courts could enforce, most notably against congress’s
passing bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. Before the formation of the bill of
rights which would have eventually been added to the constitution in order to
protect state based interests, the framers included in the constitution important
provisions to limit federal power.
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