The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was an illegal coup d’etat. This essay will be a debate paper. I will split it into three parts. The first part will talk about the Constitutional Convention and why it is legal. The second part will cover why it was illegal. The third part will be the outcome of this debate, whether it is legal or illegal. The entire essay will cover the history of the Constitutional Convention.
Well what is it? According to U. S. Department of State (.gov), “The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation.” This was to decide if the state or the federal government should have more power. Many people believed that the federal government should have the power to overrule some laws. Other people believed that if the federal government became too strong, then they would oppress the citizens. Why would this be a coup d’etat. According to Wikipedia, “A coup d’état or simply a coup, is an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership by force.”
According to study.com, “What was the purpose of the Constitutional Convention? The original purpose was to amend the Articles of Confederation to form a stronger executive branch of government. This plan was replaced by the delegates’ determination to write a new document, the Constitution of the United States.” In 1878 delegates from the US came to the Pennsylvania State house (also known as Independence hall). To keep out the press and have security, they shut and locked all the windows and doors. hey also wanted to make sure that the delegates would speak their minds. All of them were sworn to secrecy and were not aloud to tell anyone about it until they were dead, which when they were they couldn’t tell anyone anyway. Not many people expected anything to happen because of this, but in the end the Articles of Confederation weren’t just revised, but they were completely changed! They named this new document the US Constitution. This type of thing is called a bloodless coup d’etat because the Articles of Confederation were changed into the US Constitution. What does a coup d’etat have to do with this. According to Wikipedia, “A coup d’état or simply a coup, is an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership by force.” The delegates who wanted to revise the articles forced the others into joining them in their ideas. This is illegal. Just to make sure that you know the difference from illegal and legal. According to LII (Legal Information Institute), “The term illegal means any action which is against or not authorized by the law or statute. Also called illicit or unlawful. It can refer to an action that is in violation of criminal law, like assault, arson, or murder.” Legal is the opposite. So far I have found no reason why the Constitutional Convention was legal, but let’s keep trying.
If you ask anyone, they’ll probably say that all of the states agreed to the constitution, but only nine of the thirteen states agreed! During this time there were only thirteen states. This means that the US Constitution should never have been legal. They enforced the US Constitution anyway! All the thirteen states ratified the US Constitution so this is why people probably get mixed up about this. According to the Dictionary ratify means “sign or give formal consent to.” This doesn’t mean that they agreed.
Does this mean that the Constitution is illegal today? Yes, and here is why. The thirteenth amendment says that to change the Articles of Confederation then all thirteen states needed to agree to change it, but only nine agreed. All of them ratified it, but four didn’t agree to change it. Many people believe that ratifying something means agreeing to it, but there’s a big difference. As I said before, ratify means “sign or give formal consent to.” Agree means “have the same opinion about something.” Since only nine agreed to change the Articles of Confederation, then changing it should have been illegal. Since the US Constitution has been enforced for around two hundred years many people believe that it is legal, but it really isn’t. There are many people today who do believe that the US Constitution should be illegal and I agree with them. It was illegally made because only nine out of thirteen states agreed to change the Articles of confederation. They could only change it if all of them agreed to change it, but not all of them agreed. All of them ratified, but they all didn’t agree.
This whole time I’ve been trying to say why the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was legal, but I’ve really just been saying why it’s illegal, so let’s start the second part.
Let’s review the points that I’ve already made. The thirteen states delegates got together to do something about the Articles of Confederation. All of them ratified, but only nine agreed to completely change it. Article thirteen declared that the Articles of Confederation were forever and could only be changed by the Congress of Confederation and if all the states agreed. So what they did was illegal. Today the US Constitution is still illegal. This is called a coup d’état. According to Wikipedia, “A coup d’état or simply a coup, is an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership by force.”
Now for everything else. Just because people who were able to change it wanted to, doesn’t mean they were allowed to. Here’s and example of what this is like.
Let’s say that your an eleven year old who goes to a kids club every week in your neighborhood. When you first made the club with your friends, you made all these rules that everyone had to follow if they wanted to be in the kids club. One of those rules is “If someone wants to change, add, or get rid of a rule, then all of the kids in the club needed to agree to change it”. This rule makes sense and it’s exactly what was in the Articles of Confederation. Let’s go back to the example. Years later, you have your own kids and they go to the exact same club you did, but they set up a government system. Now out of the twenty three kids in the club there’s one president, one vice president, and five kids in the “House of Representatives”. This system works great, but they give themselves the authority to change the rules without the vote of anyone else. one day that’s not a meeting day, these political children (your kids not one of them) choose to meet up because one of them wants to change the rules. This one kid wants to make rules like no girls, expensive snacks, and beat up someone who disobeys the rules. Imagine that your kids are girls, what would you think of that? Anyway, only some of the kids want to change the rules and the others don’t, but they do anyway. That means that your kids can’t go to the club anymore. If I had kids and that happened to them, then I would prank the political kids and their houses. I would also try to change the kids minds so they would leave the rules the same. If they didn’t change the rules back to normal, then I would shut down the club. If I was a little girl and that happened to me, then I would set fire to the inside of the meeting place. What if you were those girls parents or one of those girls? what would you do? What if you had some money problems and couldn’t buy expensive snacks for your kids to take to the club? This is very similar to what happened in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, except for the fact that there already was a government in the first place.
Just because the Constitutional Convention was illegal, doesn’t mean that it didn’t do any good. There were lots of problems that it helped fix. According to The National Constitution Center, “Here is a quick list of the problems that occurred, and how these issues led to our current Constitution.
1. The states didn’t act immediately. It took until February 1779 for 12 states to approve the document. Maryland held out until March 1781, after it settled a land argument with Virginia.
2. The central government was designed to be very, very weak. The Articles established “the United States of America” as a perpetual union formed to defend the states as a group, but it provided few central powers beyond that. But it didn’t have an executive official or judicial branch.
3. The Articles Congress only had one chamber and each state had one vote. This reinforced the power of the states to operate independently from the central government, even when that wasn’t in the nation’s best interests.
4. Congress needed 9 of 13 states to pass any laws. Requiring this high supermajority made it very difficult to pass any legislation that would affect all 13 states.
5. The document was practically impossible to amend. The Articles required unanimous consent to any amendment, so all 13 states would need to agree on a change. Given the rivalries between the states, that rule made the Articles impossible to adapt after the war ended with Britain in 1783.
6. The central government couldn’t collect taxes to fund its operations. The Confederation relied on the voluntary efforts of the states to send tax money to the central government. Lacking funds, the central government couldn’t maintain an effective military or back its own paper currency.
7. States were able to conduct their own foreign policies. Technically, that role fell to the central government, but the Confederation government didn’t have the physical ability to enforce that power, since it lacked domestic and international powers and standing.
8. States had their own money systems. There wasn’t a common currency in the Confederation era. The central government and the states each had separate money, which made trade between the states, and other countries, extremely difficult.
9. The Confederation government couldn’t help settle Revolutionary War-era debts. The central government and the states owed huge debts to European countries and investors. Without the power to tax, and with no power to make trade between the states and other countries viable, the United States was in an economic mess by 1787.
10. Shays’ rebellion – the final straw. A tax protest by western Massachusetts farmers in 1786 and 1787 showed the central government couldn’t put down an internal rebellion. It had to rely on a state militia sponsored by private Boston business people. With no money, the central government couldn’t act to protect the “perpetual union.””
I bet the last one caught your attention. Shays’ rebellion was the main thing that led to the Constitutional Convention. the protest lasted from 1786-1787. The cause was debt. At the end of At the end of the American Revolutionary War, there was a monetary debt crisis. Because the debts were so high, the government decided to do a little but of hyperinflation. Of course we all know that inflation is terrible for the economy, so hyperinflation must have been a huge problem. How dumb do you have to be to make inflation? Hyperinflation would destroy the economy today. Some people revolted against the hyperinflation, resulting in Shays’ rebellion.
George Washington also helped the Constitution to become legal. In 1754, the half0king lied to George Washington. This led to the Battle of Jumonville Glen. Years later in 1786, Henry Knox lied to George Washington about the current events. George Washington was extremely angry because people kept lying to him, so he decided to attend the Constitutional Convention of 1787. This was after he was repetitively saying that he would not attend. The president of the United States being at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 gave it legitimacy. This led to its ratification.
The Constitution is also a “living and breathing” document. This is a really bad thing. If a document is living and breathing, then it is able to be changed. You need permission from most of the states, but it can still be changed. This is bad because almost anything can be put into it. When someone wants a living and breathing document, then they are saying that they was the judges to have complete power to interpret the Constitution in such a way that it allows the federal government to do anything they want to do. If the government had this kind of power, then we would collapse as a nation. Not that we aren’t, it will just be quicker. A living and breathing document is a terrible thing to build our government on. It is unstable. Soon it will topple over and fall onto us.
Just because the Constitution is illegal, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have things that help us as a nation. According to the University of Baltimore, “First it creates a national government consisting of a legislative, an executive, and a judicial branch, with a system of checks and balances among the three branches. Second, it divides power between the federal government and the states. And third, it protects various individual liberties of American citizens.” So it gives us out rights, it divides up power to the different governments fairly, and it gives us a strong three part government. There are other thing that makes the United States a strong nation though. According to Study.com, “The United States is a world power and a superpower for many reasons. For one, the United States has the best-equipped and best-funded military on Earth. Unlike other countries, the U.S. can project its military power across the world through its large air force and navy.” So we have a very large military which helps.
Now so far, I’ve been through about half of this essay, but this next part will be the conclusion. This will have multiple parts including a review, conclusion, and how to discuss this with others. If you don’t understand what I’ve said so far, I’ll try to make it simpler in the review, but I make no promises.
Let’s start with the review.
According to U. S. Department of State (.gov), “The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation.” According to study.com, “What was the purpose of the Constitutional Convention? The original purpose was to amend the Articles of Confederation to form a stronger executive branch of government. This plan was replaced by the delegates’ determination to write a new document, the Constitution of the United States.” In 1878, a lot of delegates came from around America and went to Pennsylvania. From there, they went to Independence Hall. There was as much security as they could get to make sure that everyone could say what they wanted without fear of being heard by anyone not wanted there. Everyone there was sworn to secrecy. The goal was to improve the Articles of Confederation, or at least this is what the people who set it up told the delegates. From the beginning of the planning, Those that set this up were planning to completely change the Articles of Confederation. Nobody expected anything to change, but they were wrong. In the end though, it was completely changed. They named this new thing the US Constitution. Now this was illegal. All of the thirteen states had to agree to change anything, but only nine out of the thirteen agreed. They all ratified it, but that doesn’t mean that the US Constitution was legal. According to the Dictionary “sign or give formal consent to making it officially valid”. This means they would consider it, but in the end they didn’t agree.
Article 13: Declared that the Articles of Confederation were forever and could only be changed by the Congress of Confederation and if all the states agreed.
There were lots of thing that led to the Constitutional Convention. You can read about these things in an earlier section in this essay. One of the ones that I highlighted was Shay’s rebellion. This was a protest that lasted from 1786-1787. The cause of this protest was debt. At the end of the American Revolutionary War, there was a ton of debt. The government wanted to solve this problem with hyperinflation. Inflation by itself is bad, but hyperinflation is much worse. Some countries give up on their currency because of hyperinflation. Some people rebelled because of this hyperinflation, resulting in Shay’s rebellion.
The Constitution is a living and breathing document. This is very bad for our economy. A living and breathing document can be changed at anytime. Most of the states need to agree to it though. Anything can be put into it if other pieces of the government allows it. If it was changed today, nothing good would come out of it with our politicians.
Just because something is illegal, doesn’t mean that it’s immediately the worst thing on earth. There are good things that come out of the Constitution. According to the University of Baltimore, “First it creates a national government consisting of a legislative, an executive, and a judicial branch, with a system of checks and balances among the three branches. Second, it divides power between the federal government and the states. And third, it protects various individual liberties of American citizens.” So it gives us out rights, it divides up power to the different governments fairly, and it gives us a strong three part government. There are other thing that makes the United States a strong nation though. According to Study.com, “The United States is a world power and a superpower for many reasons. For one, the United States has the best-equipped and best-funded military on Earth. Unlike other countries, the U.S. can project its military power across the world through its large air force and navy.”
With that done, how do you discuss this topic with whomever you feel the need to discuss it with? Well first you could tell them to read this essay, but if they can’t, or won’t then you can start by telling them how the Constitutional Convention came to be. Tell them how it was rigged. tell them their original law.
Article 13: Declared that the Articles of Confederation were forever and could only be changed by the Congress of Confederation and if all the states agreed.
They broke this law so they could have laws that they wanted and what they believed would be good for America. Tell the the difference of ratifying something and actually making it legal. If you can convince then that the people who made the Constitutional Convention were breaking the law, it will be a lot easier to tell them the rest of this. Give your friend both sides of the argument. Why People think it’s legal and illegal. What kind of questions will they ask you?
What’s the difference between ratification and agreeing? According to the Dictionary ratify means “sign or give formal consent to.” Agreeing means to have the same opinion about something. When all of them ratified it, that meant that they would think about it, but only nine agreed. this means that they said yes to the changes.
Why was the Constitution made legal, even though not all of the states agreed to it? People are people. They lie all the time. If your surprised, then your dumb. Human beings will do almost anything to make it so they get what they want. They don’t care whether or not they should do something or not.
Should I obey the Constitution today? Yeah. I don’t know all the details to this, but I’m sure that you know how to look something up. But obey it anyway, until you know the consequences of disobedience.
Why would someone want to change the Articles of Confederation? Because people are people. They want what they want right then. But there were some things that led to it.
According to The National Constitution Center, “Here is a quick list of the problems that occurred, and how these issues led to our current Constitution.
1. The states didn’t act immediately. It took until February 1779 for 12 states to approve the document. Maryland held out until March 1781, after it settled a land argument with Virginia.
2. The central government was designed to be very, very weak. The Articles established “the United States of America” as a perpetual union formed to defend the states as a group, but it provided few central powers beyond that. But it didn’t have an executive official or judicial branch.
3. The Articles Congress only had one chamber and each state had one vote. This reinforced the power of the states to operate independently from the central government, even when that wasn’t in the nation’s best interests.
4. Congress needed 9 of 13 states to pass any laws. Requiring this high supermajority made it very difficult to pass any legislation that would affect all 13 states.
5. The document was practically impossible to amend. The Articles required unanimous consent to any amendment, so all 13 states would need to agree on a change. Given the rivalries between the states, that rule made the Articles impossible to adapt after the war ended with Britain in 1783.
6. The central government couldn’t collect taxes to fund its operations. The Confederation relied on the voluntary efforts of the states to send tax money to the central government. Lacking funds, the central government couldn’t maintain an effective military or back its own paper currency.
7. States were able to conduct their own foreign policies. Technically, that role fell to the central government, but the Confederation government didn’t have the physical ability to enforce that power, since it lacked domestic and international powers and standing.
8. States had their own money systems. There wasn’t a common currency in the Confederation era. The central government and the states each had separate money, which made trade between the states, and other countries, extremely difficult.
9. The Confederation government couldn’t help settle Revolutionary War-era debts. The central government and the states owed huge debts to European countries and investors. Without the power to tax, and with no power to make trade between the states and other countries viable, the United States was in an economic mess by 1787.
10. Shays’ rebellion – the final straw. A tax protest by western Massachusetts farmers in 1786 and 1787 showed the central government couldn’t put down an internal rebellion. It had to rely on a state militia sponsored by private Boston business people. With no money, the central government couldn’t act to protect the “perpetual union.””
I know that I already put these on this essay, but I decided to save you the time of scrolling back up.
What’s the conclusion of all of this? I’ve stated the facts, and they all point to the fact that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was an illegal coup d’etat. Out of thirteen states, all of them ratified it, but not all of them agreed to it. People will say that it is legal, because we’ve been following it for so long, but they are wrong. It is illegal. I’m not saying that you should ditch it and do what you want. You should follow it, but not to the extent that it makes you do something that you shouldn’t. I’ve stated multiple times that it does help even though it wasn’t fairly made. If not all of the states wanted it, then it shouldn’t have become established, but it was. This made it unfair and rigged for the states that didn’t want it.
In the end, The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was and is illegal.