You will prepare and submit a term paper on A Brief History and Present Day of American Congress. Your paper should be a minimum of 1500 words in length.

You will prepare and submit a term paper on A Brief History and Present Day of American Congress. Your paper should be a minimum of 1500 words in length. The U.S. Congress has evolved over the years. Upon declaring independence from England in 1776, the Articles of Confederation were written. This was the guiding governing document of the country for 12 years. In those early years, the Second Continental Congress was actually formed. This is really the first instance of Congress in the United States, as the First Continental Congress actually came into being before the Revolutionary was fought. In fact, the Second Continental Congress was actually the national government until 1789, as there was no chief executive or president before 1789.

Congress has a storied history. Because America desired to rid itself of the strong government rule the existed during Colonial times (when England governed the country), the first government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation actually called for a weak central government. This was in exchange for each of the 13 colonies, soon to be referred to as states, having more say in what when on between their individual borders. Over the first 12 years of the nation’s history, it because obvious that there were some problems with the Articles of Confederation. While it was a great beginning point for how to govern the nation, something more was needed.

In 1787, a new Congressional Convention was called to address these problems. Rather than fix the Articles of Confederation, Representatives opted to rewrite an entirely new Constitution. It was during this convention that the idea of a Congress was created, in addition to two other branches, the executive and the judicial. The theory was that each separate branch would balance out the powers of the other two so that no one branch contained too much power.