This week we take a look at our founding fathers and the creation of our Constitution. Political philosopherssuch as John Locke Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes were major influences on our leaders of the time. Ideas of liberty equality popular consent and limited government were (and continue to be) important points of the day.
The Constitution came about due to ineffectiveness of the Articles of Confederation. In 1787 delegates from the 13 states gathered in Philadelphia to determine how best to proceed with creating a government that would honor the principles of those philosophers and the goals of the American Revolution. Yet these were 13 disparate states who all wanted different things.
How would they proceed? How could they possibly meet the southern demands for protecting the institution of slavery with the northern demands for abolishing it? One wrong move and the Constitutional Convention would have collapsed and our future would have been uncertain.
Copy and paste the web address below into your internet browser.Work your way through this simulation. When you are donewrite a 200 word post with a reference that addresses:- What you learned in the simulation- the main issues discussed in the simulation (among the delegates)- what choicesyoumade and their results- and what you would have done differently (if anything) from the delegates.
Simulation: You are James MadisonCopy/Paste this link into your web browser:
http://media.pearsoncmg.com/pcp/pcp_90714/Player/sim.youarejamesmadison.html