Shay’s Rebellion had just happened—a bunch of angry farmers marching on courthouses because they were drowning in debt. The elites were terrified that the whole experiment would turn into a bloody anarcho\-farmer uprising. So, the secret goal became: Crack down on chaos, but don’t look like you’re cracking down. They wanted a government that could actually collect taxes and raise an army, without becoming King George 2.0.
Lesson Plans for the Birth of a Nation - The Start of the
And here’s the kicker: They almost failed. Multiple times. The convention was so close to collapsing that Franklin suggested starting every session with a prayer—which was hilarious, considering they had no chaplain and most of the delegates were deists who thought God was a clockmaker. Desperate times, man.
The Great Compromise That Saved the BBQ
Big states wanted power based on population; small states wanted equal say. The original goal of “fixing the Articles” was long gone, replaced by a knife fight over representation. Enter Roger Sherman, a guy so forgettable that history books barely mention him, who proposed the Great Compromise: two houses of Congress, one for the big dogs, one for the little guys. It was the legislative equivalent of giving everyone a participation trophy—and it worked.
Oh, and about slavery? They literally tabled the issue because they knew it would blow up the whole thing. The original goal wasn’t to solve every moral problem; it was to get a functional government working before the whole country imploded. They punted the slavery debate for another 70 years, which is like ignoring a leaky pipe until your basement floods.
Chapter Five U.S. History Mr. Kissam - ppt download
