Young scholars explore how the U.S. government was created in the years following the Articles of Confederation.

A complete transcript of James McHenry's account of the Constitutional Convention on May 14, 1787. McHenry discusses the Virginia Plan.

The complete text of the notes taken by Robert Yates while he was a delegate at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

An overview of the process of ratification which occurred following the Constitutional Convention proposed the first version of the Constitution. Meet the primary contributors and understand the six stages of the ratification.

The issue of slavery was a contentious one during debates in the Constitutional Convention. Read about the various issues, the quotes of several of the delegates, and see how the word "slave" is not even mentioned in the Constitution....

Read the words of John Adams at the Constitutional Convention where he is debating the meaning of "the people" in the Constitution.

The original and complete text of the letter approved by the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787 recommending the newly adopted U.S. Constitution to the Congress and the states for ratification.

Read the authentic notes on Virginia's selection of their delegates to the Federal Constitutional Convention. The transcript describes the nominations and the final tally - George Washington, Patrick Henry, Edmund Randolph, John Blair,...

The original text of The Virginia Plan presented at the Constitutional Convention. Discusses federal versus consolidated government.

The original text of a letter from James Madison to George Washington discussing his ideas for a new national government that were to soon be presented to the Constitutional Convention as the Virginia Plan.

Comprehensive overview of the U.S. Constitution. Places the Constitution in context with two other founding charters of American democracy and government, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Includes access to digital...

Travel back to 1787 and become a delegate to the convention in Philadelphia. As the Founding Fathers struggle to decide how the young nation will be governed, explore how very different men representing their states' conflicting...

Shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, American leaders realized that the nation needed a new, stronger Constitution. But what would the new system of government look like?

George Washington wrote of the period between the Treaty of Paris and the writing of the Constitution that the states were united only by a "rope of sand."Disputes between Maryland and Virginia over navigation on the Potomac River led to...

Reforming the state's constitution was one of the most important and hotly debated political issues in antebellum North Carolina. The state's constitution of 1776, which remained largely unchanged until the convention of 1835, had...

See transcripts of the debates of the Federal Convention of 1787, the draft of the Constitution, or see the facsimiles of the original documents. Trace the progress of the Constitution using the historical documents themselves.

The University of Chicago provides thousands of primary source documents concerning the diverse contents of the Constitution. Documents underlying the proposed Constitution, as well as documents of the time debating the proposed...

This site from the United States Senate provides information about the evolution of the Senate as the Constitution was being written by the Constitutional Congress.

In a nutshell, you can find out the problems the new nation had under the Articles of Confederation and the process resulted in a new constitution.

In this activity, students will analyze a primary source document to find relevant historical data and measure the degree of agreement and disagreement during the Constitutional Convention.

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention had to decide the means of amending the Constitution. Discusses Madison's proposal for empowering Congress to propose amendments, either on its own initiative or upon application by the...

Lesson on immigration, conflict and nativism in which students examine primary source documents to evaluate public policy and attitudes towards Chinese immigrants in California, 1878-1879.

Essay covers from the Articles of Confederation and the problems of disunity of the new states after the Revolutionary War, internally as well as externally, to the Constitutional Convention, an attempt to address the Articles' problems....

A brief video providing background information on the Constitutional Convention. [3:58] The video is followed by a quiz and a list of additional resources.