The greatest fear of the Founding Fathers was to have a government ruled by one person, a tyrant. After the revolutionary war against Great Britain, the Americans wanted to make sure that they would be seen as an independent and strong newly emerged country. Their first shot at a government was with the Articles of Confederation. However, they failed because the central government that had been put in place was weak. Noticing that that was a problem, the founding fathers sought to make a stronger government. Of course, they always kept in mind that having a really strong central government would lead to a similar incident to the one they had recently had with Great Britain. As a result, they created the United States Constitution that we still use now. This new document became the ultimate rule of the United States of America. The Constitution shapes the national structure of the government. Within the Constitution, we are presented with the …show more content…
In order to prevent one branch from obtaining absolute power, the founders created a system of checks and balances. They also decided to form a federalist form of government in which not only the national government had power to make decisions but also the state governments. The three systems of separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism, allowed the Framers of the Constitution to prevent the federal government from gaining absolute power.
In order to prevent the national government from being one absolute power, the framers of the Constitution decided to separate the powers from within the government. “The doctrine of separation of powers is based on the idea of dividing government into three distinct parts—the executive, legislative, and judicial branches”(Separation of Powers, 2003). This separation of powers system was intended to keep any one office from becoming a monarchy or a tyrant. Each branch of government was assigned a unique task that they would work to accomplish