The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The convention was held because of management problems in the United States, which, after The independence of Great Britain, acted within the framework of the Articles of Confederation. Although the Convention was tasked with revising the articles of Confederation, the intention of many of its supporters, including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was from the outset to create a new government rather than repair the existing government. Delegates elected George Washington to chair the Convention. The result of the Convention was the Constitution of the United States, which made the Convention one of the most important events in the history of the United States. At the time, the Convention was not referred to as a „Constitutional Convention“ and most delegates who wanted to develop a new Constitution did not come. Many felt that the purpose of the Convention was to discuss and design improvements to existing statutes and would not otherwise have agreed to participate. When the Convention began, most delegates – not even all – agreed that the objective would be a new system of government, not just a revised version of the articles of Confederation. There was some resistance to the popular election of the House of Commons or the House of Representatives. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and Roger Sherman of Connecticut feared that people would be too easily deceived by demagogues and that popular elections would lead to crowd domination and anarchy. Pierce Butler of South Carolina believed that only rich men could become familiar with political power.
However, the majority of the Convention supported the popular elections. [58] George Mason of Virginia said the House of Commons should be „the great repository of the democratic principle of government.“ [59] Slavery was one of the most difficult problems faced by delegates. Slavery was widespread in the states at the time of The Congress. [123]:68 At least one-third of the 55 delegates in Congress owned slaves, including all delegates from Virginia and South Carolina. [123]:68-69 Slaves made up about one-fifth of the state population,[137]:139 and, with the exception of northern New England, where slavery had been largely eliminated, slaves lived in all parts of the country. [137]132 However, more than 90% of slaves[137] lived in the South, where about one in three families owned slaves (in the largest and richest state of Virginia, this number was almost one in two families). [137]135 The entire agricultural economy of the South was based on slavery and the meridian delegates of the Convention were not prepared to accept any proposal they believed to threaten the institution. These and other issues have worried many founders about the risk of the union disintegration as it existed until then. [19] [20] In September 1786, delegates from five states met at the Annapolis Convention and invited all states to a larger convention to be held in Philadelphia in 1787. The Federal Congress then approved the convention „for the sole explicit purpose of revising the articles of Confederation.“ [21] Rhode Island was the only state to refuse to send delegates, when it was to be the last state to ratify the Constitution in May 1790. [22] The Convention rejected the veto of Congress. In his place, Martin proposed a language drawn from the New Jersey plan, unanimously approved by the convention: „that the legislative acts of the United States, adopted on the basis of the statutes of the Union, and all treaties concluded and ratified under the authority of the United States, will be the supreme right of the States concerned .
. . . and that the . . . Member States are bound by their decisions. [113] Despite their successes, these three dissidents became increasingly unpopular, as most of the other delegates wanted to end the Affairs of the Convention and return home.