Vocabulary Activity 3 - PC\|MAC

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CHAPTER 3

Name

Date

Class

Vocabulary Activity 3

The Constitution

DIRECTIONS: Write a term from the box below in each blank in the following paragraphs.

amendment Bill of Rights Constitutional Convention

executive Great Compromise judicial

legislative separation of powers Three-fifths Compromise

When it became clear that the Articles of Confederation were not strong enough, many

delegates, including Roger Sherman, and I, James Madison, met in Philadelphia for the

(1)

. There I presented my plan for governing. My plan called for three

branches, the (2)

, which creates the laws; the (3)

,

which enforces the laws; and the (4)

, which interprets the laws. This

(5)

ensures that no one branch could become too powerful.

There were many areas of disagreement during the convention. One issue was whether

legislative representation should be based on the states' population or equal representation

for each state. Finally, we decided the upper house of Congress would have equal

representation while representation of the lower house would be determined by states'

populations. This solution was called the (6)

. Then we moved on to

the question of how to count enslaved African Americans. Southern states wanted them

counted toward legislative representation. Northern states felt since slaves could not vote

they should not be counted toward representation. The resolution of this question was

called the (7)

.

Although many delegates thought my constitution was a good one, we recognized that

we might need to change it in the future. We created a process by which we could add an

(8)

to the Constitution that would ensure a majority of the nation

agreed with the new law. However, even with this option, not everyone thought my plan

was a good one. They feared that the national government would become too powerful and

the United States would become a tyrannical state. One of the first changes made to the

Constitution, the addition of the (9)

in 1791, came out of the national

debate about the new Constitution.

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