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#Coursenotes government by the people chapter 10 trial#

Madison then guided them through Congress, where his intellectual and political skills were quickly making him the leading figure in the Congress of the United States.Amendments to the Constitution could be proposed in either of two ways-by a new constitutional convention requested by two-thirds of the states or by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress fearing that a new convention might unravel the narrow federalist victory, James Madison determined to draft the amendments himself.

Many states had ratified the federal Constitution on the understanding that it would soon be amended to include such guarantees drawing up a bill of rights headed importance.

#Coursenotes government by the people chapter 10 trial#

Many Antifederalists had sharply criticized the Constitution drafted at Philadelphia for its failure to provide guarantees of individual rights such as freedom of religion, trial by jury.

Three department heads served under the president: Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and Secretary of War Henry Knox.

Washington soon put his stamp on the new government, especially by establishing the cabinet the Constitution merely provides that the president “may require” written opinions of the heads of the executive-branch departments (cabinet meetings evolved).

Washington solemnly took the oath of office on April 30, 1789, on Wall Street.

His presence was imposing balanced rather than brilliant, he commanded his followers by strength of character rather than by the arts of the politician.

General Washington was unanimously drafted as president by the Electoral College in 1789-the only presidential nominee ever to be honored by unanimity.Slippery Spanish and British agents moved freely among the settlers and held out seductive promises of independence (United States appeared disjointed).People of the western waters-in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio-were particularly restive and dubiously loyal the mouth of the Mississippi lay in the hands of Spaniards.All but 5 percent of the people lived east of the Appalachian Mountains the trans-Appalachian overflow was concentrated chiefly in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, all of which were welcomed as states within fourteen years (Vermont a state in 1791).America’s population was still about 90 percent rural, despite the flourishing cities.The most populous cites were Philadelphia, numbering 42,000, New York 33,000, Boston 18,000, Charleston 16,000, and Baltimore numbering 13,000.When the Constitution was launched in 1789, the population was doubling about every twenty-five years, and the first official census of 1790 recorded almost 4 million people.The eyes of a skeptical world were on the upstart United States of America.Nonetheless, the Americans were brashly trying to erect a republic on an immense scale.Worthless paper money, state and national, was plentiful as metallic money was scarce.Finances of the infant government were likewise precarious the revenue had declined to a trickle, whereas the public debt, with interest heavily in arrears, was mountainous.Within twelve troubled years, the American people had risen up and thrown overboard both the British yoke and the Articles of Confederation (not best training for government).