Article outlines the issues of debate over slavery and the compromises made while writing the Constitution.

This site is from a unit called 'Writing the US Constitution.' It looks at the documents that preceded the Constitution, and the major issues that were debated while the Constitution was being created.

Read reconstructions of debates by delegates to the Constitutional Convention as they attempted to come to terms with slavery, the slave trade, and how to address the issue in the Constitution so all states would be willing to ratify it....

Primary source document, informational text and questions for discussion included for students studying issues surrounding the abolition of slavery and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

Read about how compromises were reached at the Philadelphia convention that dealt with issues between large and small states, and slave and free states. Take the quick quiz to assess knowledge about the writing of the Constitution.

A discussion of the process the congress went through in determining what would happen to the territory west of the original thirteen states. Read the final provisions of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

The election of 1860 showed the deep divisions that split the country. With four candidates representing four very different approaches to the issue of slavery, the outcome resulted in the secession of South Carolina, followed eventually...

Find short biographies of twenty-three of the fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention and their ideas about government. These men were certainly not representative of the common man in the new United States, but they were...

[Free Registration/Login Required] Read about the tremendous growing pains faced by the new republic of the United States from the presidency of George Washington up to the election of Thomas Jefferson. Find out about the domestic...