I am Jonathan Dayton, hailing from New Jersey, and I am a Federalist. I am here today at the Constitutional Convention to discuss the pros and cons of the our nation’s governing documents. I will be speaking in favor of a constitution rather than articles of confederation.
Speaking as a Federalist, I see some flaws in the Articles of the Confederation. One feature of the Articles of Confederation is that the power of voting would be in the hands of the people. Under the Articles, each state has one vote. So regardless of the population per state, be it 500,000 or 500, each still only has one vote. It also serves as an agreement among the states and is the first constitution of the United States of America, but it is incomplete. The concept of
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One positive thing about it would be that a document like this leads to political stability by removing the national government from some controversial issue areas, giving states power in some areas, and will allow our new government to achieve and maintain stability. This would be starkly different from the English government where the decisions that affect the people were made by either the king or the church, and the people had no say at all. Another pro would be that it ensures the separation of powers and prevents tyranny. Even if one person or group took control of all three branches of the federal government, federalism ensures that state governments would still function independently. Federalism, therefore, fulfills the need of a governmental structure that ensures liberty, which was the colonists’ goal in the first place. One negative thing about the constitution is that it is a large undertaking, and will require modifications as our nation progresses. It also will be difficult to come to an agreement on so many of these
Articles of Confederation was the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain.” The Articles were needed after the United States won war. There was no unity among the country. They used the Articles as their set of rules. There were many important people that had to do with the constitution.
US Constitution Essay: How does the Constitution guard against Tyranny? “Imagine if the Constitution of the United States of America wasn’t even a thing.” There would be so much chaos happening in our country. So much back and forth movement of disagreements, war, people dying because of no homes, food, water, or a leader. Tyranny would then come up a lot if there were no Constitution.
In September 1777 on November 15th the Articles of Confederation were adopted by congress. This would be a decision that shaped america for better and worse. In essence the articles of confederation was created because a constitution was needed to link the 13 colonies of America. This planned backfired however, leaving the government and congress without power. Citizens of the U.S were quick to to ratify the Articles in 1779 on may 5th.
When we made the Articles of Confederation, we did not see all of the problems that would come with it. This New Constitution could change all of that, with this we could finally give the government the power to collect taxes, and the power to create an army. These are just two of the many things that we could do with this New Constitution. There were many weaknesses that the Articles of Confederation had that made it so that when something needed to be done, we had to have a vote that 8 of the states had to agree to.
It is 1787, and the Framers of the Constitution have a daunting decision to make. The United States of America is a free nation, but a new system of government needs to be established. The first attempt has already failed; the Articles of Confederation has proven to be too weak to govern the nation and deal with its problems. This new government should be strong enough to rule over all the States while allowing each of the States to maintain sovereignty. Eventually, the Framers decide on a federal government, which divides power between the central government and regional governments.
By the year 1786, the people realized that the foundation on which our country was built on, that being the Articles of Confederation, had some major flaws that needed to be modified. The Articles of Confederation hindered Congress from taxing the people, regulating domestic affairs, and even controlling the countries commerce. With these restrictions on the power of Congress, it made it very difficult for Congress to make money. Instead, they had to rely on generous contributions from the states,which most of the states didn't partake in. The United States had no money to pay the soldiers back who served in the Revolutionary War or to pay back the money from the foreign loans that was granted to them during the war, and this resulted in the United
In 1777, the Continental Congress drafted the first constitution, known as the Articles of Confederation. These articles formed a loose confederation of the thirteen states as opposed to a strong and unified country. Due to that, the government soon began facing numerous difficulties under the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles, there was only an unicameral governing body without any separation of powers. Likewise, since the majority of the power resided in the states, the central government was quite feeble.
The constitutional convention was like a mouse trap. We are in a time where we consider our current condition to be unstable and unorganized as a country. We are fed lies about how astonishing our current government is, but in reality there are many aspects that are needed to be fixed. Many claim to have a vast knowledge on our broken system, yet they do less than the minimum in order to fix it. On the contrary, once the colonies got their Independence, there was one person who did see the mistakes that were in the Articles of Confederation.
Did you know that the president doesn’t get to create anything that the Supreme Court doesn’t approve of? I am a Federalist. I am living in the 1700’s in the brand new United States of America. Federalist, like me, believe in different rights and different ways of life than an Anti-Federalist. A federalist is a person who supports the Constitution.
Finally, the Small State-Large State Compromise is a framer of the constitution that helps guard against tyranny. “Representatives shall be appointed according to the population.” “The Senate of the the United States shall be composed to two senators from each state.” (Constitution of the United States of America, 1787) (Doc D) Each state had equal representation, yet the larger states had the representation the amount of people living in the state.
The framers were concerned that the current federal government under the Articles of Confederation did not possess enough power in order to preserve the union; therefore, the constitution must provide the federal government with enough power to serve its duty while still preserving power in the state governments. In Federalist Paper No. 1, Hamilton is urging that under the new constitution the “utility of the union” created by a stronger federal government will help to ensure the vitality of the states as it offers protection of liberty (Hamilton et al. 30). Madison argued in Federalist Paper No. 10 that in a larger government the impacts of factions will be lessened because the people will defeat “sinister views by regular vote” (Hamilton et al. 75). He also states in Federalist Paper No. 39 that the ratifying of the constitution creates a government that is “neither wholly national nor wholly federal” (Hamilton et al. 242). The idea of these three Federalist Papers that were written by the framers of the constitution is that the federal government has to have a higher share of power than was present in the Articles of Confederation in order to strengthen the union.
They felt the Constitution would create a system of federalism, a system in which the national government holds significant power, but the smaller political subdivisions also hold significant power. They felt the country needed a strong central government so that it didn’t fall apart. The Ant-Federalists were on the opposing side, they felt the Constitution granted the government too much power. They also felt there wasn’t enough protection of their right with an absent Bill of Rights. Another concern of the Anti-Federalists mainly came from the lower classes, from their standpoint they thought the wealthy class would be in main control and gain the most benefits from the ratification of this document.
(Findley, Whitehill, and Smilie, 792) Quite frankly, whether you support the Constitution or not, you have to admit that it shouldn’t exist. The delegates of the Constitutional committee had more power than perhaps any other group of people in American history, and they were never supposed to have
The Articles of the Confederation was the first government constitution that the United States used, and, although there were strength like the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, there were major weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation like the following: requiring 9 out of the 13 colonial votes from the representatives from different states to pass a law; having no executive and judicial branch; and the federal government being unable to impose tax revenue onto the states. Such flaws would eventually lead to the Constitution and the repeal of the articles, for the Constitution was a measure to fix the problems of the articles with a stronger government that allowed them to impose taxes and and implement new laws for a more effective government.
Right now a debate is occurring about whether not we should ratify the Constitution. This is an important moment in our country's history because this is the moment where we could unify and become a government or we could disapprove of the Constitution and have troubles between the country. The Articles of Confederation were not very credible because it gave the states too much power; which were too weak. The debts were not getting payed and the country was in great trouble. The Constitution would let the power will lie with the wealthy men, and not give the power to the states to raise money to pay off debt; the country will still remain in debt if we ratify the Constitution.