6. what was the purpose of the constitutional convention

From August 6 to September 10, the report of the Committee of Detail was discussed, section-bysection, and clause-by-clause. The most famous copies of this early draft are the ones annotated by President George Washington. This draft of the Constitution displays Washington's handwritten notes in pencil, recording the Convention's handling of each proposed clause. Once this phase of the Convention had ended, on September 10, a Committee of Style was appointed to "polish up the document.

Gouverneur Morris, the delegate from Pennsylvania with a name hard to forget, is credit with writing the Preamble:. However, for more than years it had been "lost to history," a United States Constitutional legend. In late , the unthinkable happened. Researcher Lorianne Updike Toler discovered the missing copy amongst Wilson's papers in the vault of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. It had never been lost, just misplaced.

On September 17, for one day only , this rare copy of Wilson's four page draft was put on display in Philadelphia in honor of the th anniversary of the adoption of the U. Fifty-five delegates from 12 states all except Rhode Island attended at least some of the sessions. Thirty-four of them were lawyers. Most of the others were planters or merchants. George Washington, who presided, was John Dickinson was Benjamin Franklin was And Roger Sherman was But most of the delegates were young men in their twenties and thirties.

Noticeably absent were the radical leaders of the drive for independence in — John Adams was not there. Nor were Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. The first phase of the convention lasted from May 25 to July The delegates developed the general outlines of a national government.

They agreed to create a government with three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. James Madison was the strongest supporter of this type of government. He would later become known as the "Father of the Constitution. The delegates, however, were divided over how the states should be represented in the legislative branch—the Congress.

Three plans were put forward. Other delegates favored the election of the executive by Congress, and feared that an absolute veto would quickly lead to abuses of power. In this compromise, between direct election by the people and the appointment of the president by Congress, the president would be chosen by a group of electors who were selected by the people of their state or the state legislatures.

Richard M. The World of George Washington. Building the Constitution. Teacher Resources. George Washington. Portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. James Madison. This led to British refusal to vacate military forts in U. Additionally, after the war, British traders flooded U. Southern delegates to the Confederation Congress wanted to lift this ban, while coastal merchants, especially in the northeast, were willing to make concessions in exchange for a treaty with otherwise favorable commercial terms.

The large majorities necessary for ratification of such measures under the Articles of Confederation often resulted in the deadlock along sectional lines between North and South. In attempting to resolve such issues, as well as problems arising from the payment of debts from the Revolutionary War and other domestic issues, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention created a model of government that relied upon a series of checks and balances by dividing federal authority between the Legislative, the Judicial, and the Executive branches of government.

The framers of the Constitution had originally imagined a weak presidency and a strong legislature divided into a House of Representatives and the Senate.

Under the Articles of Confederation, considerable minor paperwork had bogged down important business enough that legislators decided to establish an executive branch to deal with routine paperwork.