A miniseries retelling the life of John Adams will begin on HBO Sunday night (03/14) at 8:00. While we won't be able to watch it in class, it might be a good idea to try to catch parts of the series, as it depicts Adams' life beginning with his involvement during the Siege of Boston.

The Preamble

The Constitution (Post 3)

We've discussed the Constitution as the document which came out of the Constitutional Convention. Five major principles will guide our study of the document for the next few weeks:

1. Popular sovereignty
2. Limited government
3. Federalism
4. Separation of powers
5. Checks and balances
   

The Constitutional Convention (Post 2)

The Constitutional Convention, meeting from May, 1787 through the following September, was assembled after Shays' Rebellion in order to revise the Articles of Confederation. Some delegates, especially Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, proposed that the meeting turn into an opportunity to create the foundations for a new American government. Major issues discussed by the delegates - which included representatives from all states but Rhode Island - included three major compromises. Keep these compromises in mind, as they outline some of the most important concepts discussed at the meeting:

1. Great Compromise - the creation of a bicameral legislature; compromise between the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan;
2. Three-fifths Compromise - declared African-Americans as "three-fifths" of a person for voting purposes;
3. Slave Trade Compromise - declared that Congress could not make the international slave trade illegal for Americans to participate in for the next twenty years (1788 - 1808).
   

ConSource - The Constitution Online

If you're interested in more ways to discover how the Constitution came into being, be sure to look at the Constitutional Sources Project or ConSource. Sponsored by the New-York Historical Society and the History Channel, ConSource reveals not only the Constitution itself, but provides links to notes taken by the delegates, including the famous notes taken by James Madison at the Constitutional Convention which provide historians a window into the meetings at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.

Link: ConSource