Ratification Of The Constitution Dbq Essay

Following the end of the American Revolution marked a new set of problems for the United States. As impending war debts were threatening to crush the new nation, America knew they needed to address the flaws of the Articles of Confederation through a Constitutional Convention. The United States Constitution of 1787 was created in hopes of developing a stronger and more effective governing body while still upholding America’s virtues of freedom. Unfortunately, with change, comes opposition, and many people feared that the Constitution would be oppressive and undermine the autonomy of the individual states through its strong central government. Because of this, the issues that sparked the greatest controversies during the ratification of the

These principles would thwart any possibility of tyranny and ensure that no single branch could exercise complete control over the government (Carter, 2007). Despite this, many people still debated the amount of power the government should have over the nation. In a letter to Marquis Lafayette, George Washington argues that the amount of power the government has is just the right amount “to perform [the] functions of good government” (Document C) and that, said power would be so distributed across the three branches of government that it will never degenerate into an oppressive form of government. On the other hand, people like Elbridge Gerry believe the opposite. The anti-federalists feel as if the government will be too strong in general and as a result, be unable to provide an adequate representation and protection of the people’s rights. These disputes over governmental power attributed to much of the controversies and tension that was created leading up to the ratification of America’s

This can be seen through varying responses to Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan. At the time, America had an enormous amount of debt to be paid, and so Hamilton advised that the creation of a National Bank is implicit in the Constitution and necessary to achieve fiscal matters – even if the Constitution did not give the federal government the specific powers. This form of growing power and oppression within the central government created a lot of opposition against the idea of a National Bank because it is exactly what the anti-federalists were trying to avoid. Similarly, the Alien Act and the Sedition Act are other cases where the government has abused its powers. Under the Federalist government, policies were created in hopes to dis-enfranchise the Republican party. This was done through the violation of the first amendment under the guise of “national security”. As a result, the Republicans had felt attacked and oppressed by the Federalists. This created in a large divide between the two political parties. Because of this, the controversies regarding power before the ratification of the Constitution were justified being that it had such a detrimental effect on the social cohesion within America during the Federalist