Without major compromises by all involved, and the agreement to avoid the contentious issue of slavery, the framers would never have written and ratified the Constitution.
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At five critical junctures in American history, major political compromises have proved that little of lasting consequence can occur if the entrenched sides don't make serious concessions.
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Over the question of whether Missouri should be admitted to the Union as a free or slave state in 1820, creative moderates brokered an ingenious compromise that averted civil war.
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Fistfights broke out in Congress in 1850 over whether the territories just won in the Mexican War should be slave or free—and only a last-minute series of compromises prevented catastrophe.
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Compromise upon compromise whittled FDR’s dreams down considerably, but enabled him to pass the Social Security Act, perhaps the most sweeping social reform of the 20th century.
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Although marred by the grisly murders of three young activists, the Freedom Summer of 1964 brought revolutionary changes to Mississippi and the nation.
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A diminutive, persuasive Virginian hijacked the Constitutional Convention and forced the moderates to accept a national government with vastly expanded powers.
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While lauded for their 1903 flight, the Wright brothers were not convinced of their airplane’s reliability to sustain long, controlled flights until October 1905.
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In 1917, fed up with the inaction of conservative suffragists, Alice Paul decided on the unorthodox strategy of pressuring the president directly.
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More than a million children participated in the Salk poliomyelitis vaccine trials of 1954, the largest public-health experiment in American history.
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A magazine reporter covered the first American deaths in Vietnam, unaware that the soon-to-explode war would mark America’s awakening to maturity.
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(A letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College)
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