Key Terms
- Anti-Federalists
- those who opposed the 1787 Constitution and favored stronger individual states
- bicameral
- having two legislative houses, an upper and a lower house
- checks and balances
- the system that ensures a balance of power among the branches of government
- Connecticut Compromise
- also known as the Great Compromise, Roger Sherman’s proposal at the Constitutional Convention for a bicameral legislature, with the upper house having equal representation for all states and the lower house having proportional representation
- conservative Whigs
- the politically and economically elite revolutionary class that wanted to limit political participation to a few powerful families
- coverture
- the legal status of married women in the United States, which included complete legal and economic dependence on husbands
- democracy
- a system of government in which the majority rules
- Electoral College
- the mechanism by which electors, based on the number of representatives from each state, choose the president
- Federalists
- those who supported the 1787 Constitution and a strong central government; these advocates of the new national government formed the ruling political party in the 1790s
- majority rule
- a fundamental principle of democracy, providing that the majority should have the power to make decisions binding upon the whole
- manumission
- the releasing of an enslaved person by his or her owner
- monarchy
- a form of government with a monarch at its head
- proportional representation
- representation that gives more populous states greater political power by allowing them more representatives
- radical Whigs
- revolutionaries who favored broadening participation in the political process
- three-fifths compromise
- the agreement at the Constitutional Convention that three out of every five enslaved persons would be counted when determining a state’s population for purposes of representation
- unicameral
- having a single house (of legislative government)