US Constitution Longevity The United States Constitution is not just a document. It is an omnipresent artifact of the past and ongoing history for the nation it governs. Passionate arguments were abundant during the drafting of the document on what it should entail and what should be left to interpretation. The Constitution not only served to appease many people at the time of its ratification, but it stays standing as a thriving and dependable document capable of change to serve the people as they see fit. For this document to be ratified and take effect, however, first there had to be the Great Compromise, a system of checks and balances, and even a way to change the Constitution so that as the society it governed evolved, it could as well. The Great Compromise is the single most important component that lead to the ratification of the Constitution. There were two different …show more content…
In order to get the Anti-Federalists to accept the Constitution, they demanded their rights to be explicitly stated. The Federalists argued that if they listed rights, people would find loopholes and exploit them, but the Anti-Federalists were persistent and would not ratify without written and protected rights. This lead to James Madison promising that a bill of rights would be added as amendments to the Constitution (@brinstitute). These first ten amendments set a precedent for modifying the Constitution and we keep that same system today. The Constitution is ever changing to accurately govern the people of America. In conclusion, for the United States Constitution to be ratified, there had to be the Great Compromise, a system of checks and balances, and even a way to change the Constitution so that as the society it governed evolved, it could as well. It was formed by years of collective knowledge and experience, and it continues to protect the American citizens from threats to