US Constitution and Bill of Rights

[Hogeye]

The framers of the Constitution did their best to come up with a successful "tweak" of the Articles of Confederation and in the end gave up.

• On February 28, 1787, the Confederation Congress authorized a convention "for the sole purpose of revising the articles of Confederation."
• On May 25, a quorum of seven states was secured.
• On May 29, the Committee on Rules reported and 5 additional rules, including secrecy, were adopted.

So for a whole four days they mainly elected officers and selected a rules committee. Then they went secret, behind closed doors, so they could destroy the confederation and set up a central State. I sure wouldn't call this doing their best to tweak the Articles. I'd call it a bloodless coup d'etat. The very first plan offered was "The Virginia Plan," which centralized the State. The New Jersey Plan was more libertarian. The Hamilton Plan was even more authoritarian than the Virginia Plan, i.e. president for life, the president appoints governors, etc.

Governance by a Congress with lots of responsibility but no overall authority did not work and could not be made to work.

This is the party line, in all the govt school books, and repeated over and over, but it is bullshit. It would be more accurate to say: Some powerful elites were unhappy with the Articles, for several reasons. For the powermongers (like Hamilton) it didn't give enough power to centralized rulers. For the land company speculators, the Articles didn't grant them clear ownership of wilderness areas. For the script speculators, it didn't hold promise to let them sell war script at exhorbitant profit. Washington, getting bad advice, was basically conned into fearing anti-property mass rebellions like (he thought incorrectly) Shays' Rebellion. There was no grass roots or popular movement favoring giving power and tax authority to a central State. On the contrary, many people, including veterans of the Revolutionary War, considered such to be a betrayal of the revolution. Even some elites, such as Patrick Henry, refused to attend the Convention because he "smelt a rat."

Barbara, here's an article that's right down your alley. Tell me what you think of it.
The strange battle for the U.S. Bill of Rights
Those who initially demanded it ended up opposing it, and those who never wanted it made it happen.