Page 64 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade6_Flipbook

Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment gave African Americans citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment gave black men the vote. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote nationwide, and in 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment extended suffrage to eighteen-year-olds.
6 The U.S. Constitution is the oldest written constitution of a nation still being used. From the beginning, Americans and others have disagreed about its relative merits. Federalists believed that, by creating a stronger national government, the Constitution would enable the United States to survive among the competing powers of Europe
and provide a surer safeguard for liberty at home. Antifederalists feared that the new Constitution would create a new form of tyranny, especially since it lacked a bill of rights. Only by promising that the new Congress would make passage of a bill of rights its top priority did the Federalists secure ratification of the Constitution.
7 To British prime minister William Gladstone, the U.S. Constitution was “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” But according to Justice Thurgood Marshall, the U.S. Constitution was “defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.” The Constitution was not perfect, but rather perfectible—through the amendment process.
8 At the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin stated that he approved of the Constitution “with all its faults” because he did not think a better one was possible at that time. The oldest delegate to the convention at eighty-one, Franklin was too weak
to give speeches and instead offered his opinions through written remarks delivered by a fellow Pennsylvania delegate. Franklin reportedly signed the Constitution with tears
in his eyes. But if Franklin was willing to sign a document so full of errors, according to one tart-tongued Boston critic, “No wonder he shed a tear.” Perhaps Franklin’s last words to the convention gave the best assessment of the prospects of the new republic. As the other delegates were signing the Constitution, Franklin remarked to those nearby that, throughout the convention, he had wondered whether the sun carved on the back of George Washington’s chair was rising or setting. “Now,” he said, “I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”
key ideas and deTails
Why did some early Americans think it was necessary to add the Bill of Rights to the Constitution?
key ideas and deTails
How would Justice Thurgood Marshall respond to the idea that the Constitution is a “perfect” document?
Close Reading Workshop 5 • Close Reading of Informational Texts in Social Studies/History 7
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