【美国精神】第65期

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Explanation:

  When the 13 American colonies¹ (or areas of land ruled by Great Britain but far away from it) got their independence (or freedom) from Britain, they did not have a strong government. They agreed to follow a document called the Articles of Confederation, but it wasn’t strong enough for the new country. So political leaders decided² to have a meeting called the Constitutional Convention³. Some of the people who went to the Constitutional Convention wanted to improve (or make better) the Articles of Confederation. Others wanted to create a new type of government.

  The Constitutional Convention was held from May 25th to September 17th, 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During that time, political leaders discussed (or talked about) many important issues. One of the main disagreements was how Americans should be represented in the legislature (or the lawmaking part of the government). People from large states wanted representation⁴ to be based on population, while people from small states wanted each state to have equal representation. A man from Connecticut, Roger Sherman, finally solved (or found an answer to) the problem when he created the Connecticut Compromise⁵, which was a solution that gave everybody some, but not all, of what they wanted. The Connecticut Compromise created the House of Representatives, where representation is based on population, and the Senate⁶, where representation is equal for all states.

  Another disagreement at the Constitutional Convention was how the votes of slaves (or people who were owned as property and were forced to work without being paid) should be counted. About 20% of the U.S. population was slaves, and most of them were in the South. States with many slaves wanted them to be counted for representation in the legislature, but not for taxes (or money paid to the government). States without slaves wanted them to be counted for taxes, but not for representation. The solution was another compromise: to count each slave as threefifths (or 60%) of a person.

  There were many other disagreements during the Constitutional Convention, but eventually the Constitution (or the most important legal document in the United States) was written. The men who were at the Constitutional Convention are often called our Founding Fathers, because they were the people who helped to found (or create) the U.S. government as we know it today.

 

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