William+Samuel+Johnson-2

William Samuel Johnson By Robert Silva
 * __ Introduction __**

The Constitutional convention was held at the state house in Philadelphia in 1787. There were fifty five delegates that showed up all representing different states. The convention was called to revise the articles of confederation and make a stronger central government. After was many months of fierce debating, the new constitution was ratified by the ninth state New Hampshire on July 2, 1788, making it the “law of the land”.

William Samuel Johnson was born in stratford conneticut, on october 7, 1727. William did not go to a formal primary school. He was homeschool up untill college, when he was excepted into yale and graduated in 1774. Well at school he studied mostly law, and politics and later was admitted to the bar. He was involved in early politics starting at the stamp act congress. He is known for his involvement in the constitutional convention, and brought up the idea that the senate should be organized as a separate body. In 1789 he was elected as the first US senator from conneticut and retired in 1791. He devoted the rest of his time to his position as president of Columbia College untill 1800 when he was to ill to work anymore. William Samuel Johnson died on November 14, 1819 in his hometown of stratford conneticut.
 * __Background__**

**__Role in the Constitutional Convention__**

William played a bill role in the constitutional convention. He gave many speeches during the convention that had a major impact on debates. One of his main goals was to protect the rights of Connecticut and other smaller states.


 * __DBQ- How did the Constitution prevent against Tyranny__**

William Johnson was not a federalist and was very involved in the convention. His main goal in the convention was to persuade the delegates to include a strong government that had a separation of powers. He also wanted the powers to not only be split in the government but He wanted states of all sizes to have a good say in what happened in the government. He was campaigning on behalf of smaller state, like the state he was representing.

The constitution was drafted because the government didn’t have enough control over its citizens. Before the constitution the only document holding the government together was the articles of confederation. This had many loopholes; there was no strong government power, no courts, and no enforcement of laws. This document was not enough to hold together a national government. It was deemed necessary to draft and create a new constitution under which the government could control the courts, have a chief executive, and enforce laws and taxes. The one big problem in creating the constitution was avoiding tyranny or distributing the powers so no one person or group would have executive power over the nation. One way the constitution guarded against tyranny sharing the powers between the government and the states. They did this by dividing powers for instance, the government had the power to control trade, conduct foreign relations, provide army and navy, and declare war, print money. Set up post office, and make immigration laws. The states had the power to set up local governments, hold elections, establish schools, pass marriage and divorce laws, and regulate in-state businesses. The government and states also shared powers they both had power to tax, borrow money, set up courts, make laws, and enforce laws. As Madison said in Federalist paper #51 “the different governments will each control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself’. The second way the constitution guarded against tyranny is by evenly dividing the powers into three separate departments, the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. A system was made called checks and balances, this ensured that no one branch practiced tyranny and made decisions by themselves. The three branches can check each other on different situations for instance if the president veto’s a law, congress can override the presidents veto. The last way the constitution guarded against tyranny was by having representatives from each state to put input into nation decisions. They prevented tyranny from occurring by having the House of Representatives to go by population so that large states would have more representatives than smaller states. Some felt that this discriminated against the small states and that they didn’t have a say so they also created the senate which was two representatives from every state. This was a good way to evenly distribute power and get everyone’s opinion on decisions. Overall the constitution guarded against tyranny in many different aspects. The constitution took a lot of time to draft and finally publish but its efforts where well worth it for the benefit of the United States, without it the government would not have held together and there might have been another war.


 * =  ||= Present ||= Probably Present ||
 * = Act I ||= 14 ||=  ||
 * = Act II ||= 24 ||=  ||
 * = Act III ||= 22 ||=  ||
 * = Act IV ||= 13 ||= 1 ||
 * = Total ||= 73 ||= 1 ||