Summary Of A Brilliant Solution Inventing The American Constitution By Carol Berkin

The book, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution covers many more topics than just the making of the American constitution that Americans know today. It discusses events prior to the constitution that made the founding fathers have to revisit the governmental structure they built. The founding fathers knew that they did not want a big centralized government since that is what they were escaping from in Britain. With that in mind, they gave a lot of power to the state governments, which reinforced the states not wanting to cooperate with each other since no one was really telling them or had the power to tell them to unite under one nationality. But it was a struggle to figure out how to divide up power to not let one section

Throughout the book Berkin states that, “the country was waging war against the tyranny of centralized power” (Berkin, 17). This statement was completely true, the colonists were tired of being pushed around at every turn, tired of being relentlessly taxed on things they needed in their daily lives, most of all tired of having their rights stripped from them. The book also discusses why the Articles of Confederation were abandoned so quickly, the founding fathers soon realized that a more powerful and essential government was needed, and needed quickly. Around 1786 people started to rebel and some bloodshed. The states had too much power and the centralized government they had at the time was getting America nowhere fast. The people had already started to feel that the government had abandoned its promise to protect and uphold the rights of its people. But the hardest part about building a stronger centralized government was figuring out how much power and where the power should lie. A centralized government with too much power puts the states back into where they were in Britain, but a centralized government with no power is no government at all. That was the main problem that Berkin’s book tries to explain, with so many great minds coming together and with so many great ideas it was hard for them all to come to a consensus and thus the constitution was

The main reason was the fact that they need to amend the Articles of the Confederation. The fathers knew that the original government they built was starting to fall apart at the seams. They then created the new and improved for the structure of the American government. The Articles of the Confederation did one thing that the founding fathers knew they needed to change; it did not give enough power to the government. They were so afraid of creating a government that had too much power they simply didn’t realize where that line between too much and not enough was. The government the Articles created had no power to tax, no power to regulate trade, and worst of all, no regulation of domestic affairs in the country. These things are important to have in a centralized power. At the time the government was depending on the good nature of the states to loan them money to repay war debts and to rebuild what was lost. But that was not cutting it. Finally they needed to discuss how and when the President would be elected into office. Many people were opposed to the idea of having the people vote into power the highest form of political office. But yet the people did need a voice in that matter and thus the Electoral College was