The Origin And Growth Of The American Constitution - Case Study Example

Various amendments were prepared and ten of these were ratified within two years after the original Constitution went into effect. All of these were suggested by political experience during the revolutionary and colonial periods, while some trace their origin back through English history to Magna Charta. T is clear that the Convention which drafted our Constitution did not originate with political agitators whose heads were filled with new schemes of government. It resulted from the popular conviction that the existing federal system was a failure, a conviction which was voiced by Patrick Henry 1 and other champions of state sovereignty, as well as by those who "thought continentally.

" How slowly this conviction matured is shown in the stages by which public opinion advanced towards the goal of the Convention. (Taylor 1998 67)The Background of the Constitutional Convention As early as 1643 the colonies of Massachusetts, New Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven drew up "Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England," driven thereto by the dangers which threatened them from the hostile Indians, and from the Dutch at New Amsterdam and Fort Orange ( New York and Albany).

The purpose of this confederation was principally that of mutual defense, and matters of internal affairs were expressly left to the several colonies, but nevertheless the commissioners were directed to "endeavored to frame and establish agreements and orders in general cases of a civil nature wherein all the plant cons are interested in preserving peace among themselves, and preventing as much as may bee all occasions of war or difference with others." (Tucker, 1997 74)The provision was also made for the return by each colony to the authorities of the others of runaway servants and escaped criminals.