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| Articles of Confederation |
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Definition
| The government charter of the states from 1776 until the Constitution of 1787. |
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| A historian who argued that the Founders were largely motivated by the economic advantage of their class in writing the Constitution. |
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| A set of principles, either written or unwritten, that makes up the fundamental law of hte states. |
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| Constitutional Convention |
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| A meeting of delegates in Philadelphia in 1787 charged with drawing up amendments to the Articles of Confederation. |
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| Declaration of Independence |
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| A document written in 1776 declaring the colonists' intentions to throw off British rule. |
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| A constitutional principal reserving separate powers to the national and state levels of government. |
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| A series od political tracts that explained many of the ideas of the Founders. |
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| A constitutional proposal that made membership in one house of Congressproportional to each state's population and membeship un the other equal for all states. |
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| A British philosopher whose ideas on civil government greatly influenced the Founders. |
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| A principal architect of the Constitution who felt that a government powerful enough to encourage virtue in its citizens was too powerful. |
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| Massachusetts Constitution |
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| A state constitution with clear seperation of powers but considered to have produced to weak a government. |
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| Rights of all human being that are ordained by God, discovereable in nature and history, and essential to human progress. |
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| A constitutional proposal that would have given each state one vote in a new congress. |
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| Pennsylvenia Constitution |
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Definition
| A governing document considered to be highly democratic yet with a tendancy toward tyranny as the result of concentrating all powers in one set of hands. |
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| A constitutional principle seperation teh personnel of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. |
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| An armed attempt by revolutionary War veterans to avoid losing their property by preventing the courts in western Massachusetts from meeting, |
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| A constitutional proposal that the smaller states' representatives feared would give permanent supremacy tot eh larger states. |
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