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The Struggle Between The Constitution And The Civil War

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During the early stages of our country, the individual states felt that creating a central government was going to produce a government with absolute power. This led some of the representatives to dispute the idea, as they did not want to lose the power they already possessed. Edmund Burke said: “All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust: and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society… Power to be legitimate must be according to that eternal, immutable law, in which will and reason are the same.”
Between the creation of the Constitution and the Civil War, there was a period of implementation. In this period the Bill of Rights was ratified, but there was still a struggle defining how the Constitution would work. Due to disagreements on how to run the government, political parties were formed. The Federalist Party led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, and the Democratic- Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. …show more content…

Missouri wanted to join the union as a slave state, but needed a way to do this that would be acceptable to the North. The government decided that Missouri could become a slave state, but only if Maine could become a free state. “At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free. Admission of Missouri as a slave state would upset that balance.” http://www.history.com/topics/missouri-compromise. They then established an official ruling that everything north of the Mason Dixon line would be run as Free states. Although they were able compromise on this, it was challenging because the North wanted slavery

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