Information on the Constitutional Convention, or web Sites?

Question

I am doing a National Hisory Day Project on the the Constitutional Convention and I need some information for my research.

Answer 1

The Constitution of the United States is primarily an evolution from old English Common Law preceding Magna Carta [1215] with roots in Celtic and Saxon Village law going back at least 3,000 years.

While Magna Carta was resigned by various English kings there are a number of other documents which predated and supported the eventual writing of the Constitution, these included such as:
The Petition of Right [1628]
An Agreement of the Free People of England [1649]
The Bill of Rights [1689]
Declarations of the Stamp Act Congress [1765]
Declaration of the First Continental Congress [1774]
The Declaration of Independence [1776]
Articles of Confederation [1778]
The 1783 Treaty of Peace [1783]
The Constitutions of each of the Thirteen Original States [1776 – 1786]

The Founders were all conversant with the Writings of such as:
Montesquieu
John Locke
Adam Smith
Thomas Paine
All of these wrote about government structure.

For James Madison’s notes on the Convention which wrote the Constitution go to the following link:
http://www.constitution.org/dfc/dfc_0000.htm

As a note of reference, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy was ratified with the signing last of the five nations to sign it (the Senecas) August 31, 1142 at Gonandaga. This ranks the Iroquois Confederacy with the government of Iceland and the Swiss cantons as the oldest continuously functioning democracy on earth. All three precedents have been cited as forerunners of the United States system of representative democracy.

How much any of these three influenced the creation of the written constitutional representative Republic(s) of the United States is a debate which will go on forever. Certainly some of the Founders were aware of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy but in Madison’s Convention notes neither it nor the government of Iceland or the Swiss Cantons are mentioned.

Nor in reference material such as the "The Founder's Constitution" which concerns the sources, notes and letters of the writing of the Constitution of the United States (thousands of items by the Founders) can I find a referance to any of these three governmental structures.

Answer 2

The first thing to know is that our Constitution is not an original document. It is derived form the law of the Iroquois Confederacy, about 1000 years ago. The exact date is uncertain, due to the nature of oral histories; but about 1100 seems to be the emerging date. When the Peacemaker (or Prophet) walked among them, he told them that the nations must unite; and that their unity would last as long as they honored.

Their law was written in social and cultural terms that had meaning for them. The Constitution is a "translated" form of that document. However, the Amendments are pure American. After all, the Indians could not even conceive that such things would need to be put into writing. It would have been dishonorable to do so, and an insult to all the others of the tribes.

Hopefully, other answers will guide you from this point.

Answer 3

Here is a site with lots of information, including a play about the Convention which recreates the debate:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/

Here's a good overview:
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h368.html