Who Was The Constitution Dbq Essay

In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed and America was declared it’s own nation after years of war. America was fighting for it’s freedom because they had a tyrant ruler, King George III, who didn’t give them their rights. According to James Madison, a tyrant is one, few, or many people who abuse their given power. Originally, the framers made a weak national government, the Articles of Confederation, because they were afraid of a tyrant controlling them again. The Articles didn’t have an executive leader, or court system for the states. So, in order to fix the articles, 55 delegates from 12 of the states met in 1787 in Philadelphia. However, instead of fixing the Articles, the framers completely rewrote the Articles and made the Constitution

Federalism is the government system where the power is shared between the state and federal governments. Doc A is an excerpt from Federalist Paper #51 written by James Madison in 1788. The Federalist Papers were articles written in order to convince the states to ratify the newly written Constitution by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. According to Doc A “Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people.” Madison is explaining the double security federalism provides by having the state and Federal governments share power. In this way, the national government was strong enough to control the states, but not so much that it had total control. The states were united, but also had some freedoms like establishing schools or passing marriage laws, while the Federal Government could declare war and conduct foreign policies. Eah government was then separated into three smaller branches, which provides the double security of sharing

These guards are important because they keep one, few, or many people from seizing control of the government and abusing it’s power. If the guards in the Constitution did not exist today, the Federalism wouldn’t be able to give the National government enough power to raise funds or form a military. Without separation of powers, a person or group of people could take control of the government and make laws that are not beneficial to all. Checks and balances keep President Trump from controlling the Legislative branch and forcing his own laws on people. Without the Great Compromise, sparsely populated states, like Alaska, wouldn’t be represented and would always be outvoted in Congress while densely populated states could control the government. These examples show The Constitution’s guards against tyranny are important because they protect our rights and help us avoid being controlled by