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How The Articles Of Confederation Hindered The Central Government

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July 4th, 1776, the United States declared its independence from Great Britain through the Declaration of Independence. Before long, series of documents, alongside the declaration, were constructed to rectify the conflict that had long existed between authority and liberty. The documents strived to resolve the tension by establishing a strong, representative government. The government would possess enough power to make decisive changes while also protecting and preserving the liberty of the people. In order for the country to operate successfully, the federal government must be able to have authority to control the well-being of the nation. The Articles of Confederation hindered the central government’s ability to achieve that authority due …show more content…

To combat this issue, and the others within the Articles, the Constitution was drafted to provide a layout for the country with a stronger government without invading the liberty of the people. The government under the Articles were subjected to the will majority in any conflict and Madison claimed that “there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual”. The liberties of the people and the authority of the government were drastically diminished when faced against a majority in a purely democratic country because of the full control that party gained to push their own agenda. James Madison’s argument on the Constitution’s ability to fight faction was, “Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will broken into so many parts… the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.” The government will still be able to possess authority over states and people, however, instead of just two contrasting parties where there has to be a majority, a republic forges multiple differentiating groups and ideas that makes factions less probable. That, in turn, preserves the liberty of the people from overbearing …show more content…

Under representation of these “chosen body of citizens”, Madison asserted that, “the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.” The argument of the Constitution on representatives is, when the authority from the people is given to representatives, those representatives make decisions that will safe-guard and protect the liberty of the people. Contrary to what Madison had insisted the Constitution would do under representatives, anti-federalist views presume the liberties of the people are jeopardized when their authority is placed into the hands of people that share no common interests with you. Enclosed in Brutus III, the question is asked, “what security therefore can there be for the people, where their liberties and property are at the disposal of so few men?” To inhibit the absence of connection between representatives and the people, the Constitution, Madison claimed, “forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures”. The Constitution had been designed to overcome this conflict as a mean to preserve the liberties of the nation, while establishing a

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The debate over the Constitution created much tension throughout the new country. From problems with the Articles of Confederation, western expansion, Shay’s rebellion, problem’s at the Constitutional Convention, slave trade, and the start of the War of 1812 all created tensions over the Constitution but nothing that the greats minds of the time couldn’t handle. Initially, the Articles of Confederation were the first written constitution of the United States, drafted in 1777 and ratified four years later by Congress (Lecture). The Articles of Confederation provided for a government by a national legislature but left the crucial power of monies, as well as all final power to make and execute laws, entirely to the states (US: A Narrative History,

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After the Articles of Confederation failed because they failed to give enough power to the national government and congress, our founding father’s needed to reflect on its flaws for a new system to be set in place. Their new creation, our Constitution, was then set into place, and was created from a basis of the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation directly influence the Constitution by its failure by changing some of the responsibilities of the federal and state governments. The Articles of Confederation gave too much power to the states, and the Constitution changed that.

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10 in an attempt to ratify the Constitution, the new form of government for the United States. In the Federalist Paper No. 10, Madison analyzed the way to deal with facts, made a comparison between a pure democracy and a republic, and made another comparison on whether a small government or a large government would be the best for America. He informed the people that there is not a way to completely get rid of factions, but there are ways to deal with them. One great way to deal with factions is by having a government that knows how to control and deal with their effects. Madison believes that a republic can do that job better than a democracy, because a democracy is a small society of people who can not admit there is a cure to factions.

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