The Constitution of the United States

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Perhaps the greatest document of all time, the Constitution of the United States of America was not easily created. Fifty-five great men were needed to hammer out all the details of the Constitution in a long grueling process. As James Madison, architect of the constitution said, “The [writing of the Constitution] formed a task more difficult than can be well conceived by those who were not concerned in the execution of it. Adding to [the difficulty] the natural diversity of human opinions on all new and complicated subjects, it is impossible to consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle.” The “natural diversity of human opinions” which Madison spoke of can be split into two basic groups, Federalists, and Anti-Federalists. The Constitution took so long to be created because of the opposite views of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

The Federalists were extremely pleased with the ratification of the Constitution. Almost everything they wanted to be a part of the document was included. They felt that in order for the states to feel equal, they would all need to be part of a stronger, higher government, and the Constitution provided this. Each state would be governed by most of the same laws, and the people would all be equally represented in congress, therefore there was no reason for the people to feel that they weren’t equal to other states. The Federalists obviously wanted the government to represent the people, that is why they based the state’s representatives in congress on population. These representatives were a true representation of the people in their state. One other reason the Federalists were happy with the constitution was that…

Although many people were happy with the Constitution, many were not. These unhappy Americans were known as Anti-Federalists. There were many reasons as to why the Anti-Federalists were not happy, some more important than others. One of their biggest complaints was that every state was different, therefore they all needed to have their own separate governments. They felt it would be impossible to have a central ruling body, because the states all had their own identities. A lot of the states were similar in some ways, but no two were exactly alike. Another problem they had with the Constitution was that there was no Bill of Rights. The Anti-Federalists thought the people’s individual rights were not covered well enough in the document, and a Bill of Rights declaring these needed to be included.

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