American Revolution Ideologies

 

The Perpetual union that Americans had built by winning their independence was collapsing by 1787, six years earlier, in the Article of Confederation the thirteen governments has given a lot of power to the congress but this was not working and was not enough and something else had to be done. The congress had been denied the power to tax and the power to enforce its decrees and this made it hard for them to restore the credibility of a nation that was already indebt to other foreign power. The Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 to discuss the additional power that would be given to congress in order to enable it to do its duties more effectively but instead of giving the congress more power it was suggested that they come up with a new government and it was left in the hands of American to decide from state to state whether to pass the new constitution and if nine of the thirteen states agreed then the constitution would be put into operation. The debate surrounding the new constitution had two sides, those who wanted the constitution passed for various reasons and were referred to as the federalists and those who did not want the proposed constitution also referred to as antifederalists (Morgan, 1993).

            These two groups of people were different, the federalist arguments were different from the arguments of the antifederalist. The federalists argued that the inability of the congress to influence matters taking place in the nation and its lack of power to enforce its decrees was a threat to the nation, and if the country waited any further to set up a national government it would result to anarchy, disunion and disaster. The antifederalist who were against the adaptation of a new constitution argued that there was a need to give congress more power but the proposed constitution would bring about tyranny instead of fixing a mere disorder that had been brought about by inconveniences. This debate was heavily dictated by prominent revolutionaries that were antifederalists among them were Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, they projected dire consequences for what was in the proposed constitution if it was to be passed (Morgan, 1993).

This debate was responsible for forming the American government. These two side of the debate agreed on the principle government that they would become familiar with in the preceding years of revolutionizing and making the constitution. They agreed that the one type of government that the Americans would agree on was a republican government where the power was in the hands of the people but it had to be unlike the past where a whole population attended assemblies. Although this government would be faced by problems of its own such as to devise a way to keep the few who have been chosen to represent the people honest, and no constitution would have been capable of offering protection against human corruption the only solution was for it to devise a way to make it difficult to commit such betrayals (Morgan, 1993).

The debate went on for a long time but finally the federalists won and the proposed constitution was passed and a government system that was different from any that America had since the colonial era was put in place and the new government proved to be more effective than the antifederalist had proposed (Morgan, 1993). In some of these debates such as the one that argued for creation of a national government I would take the antifederalists side, since they had both agreed on a republican form of government that was for the people creating a national government would remove any form of local attachment and thus make the people unrepresented and the form of government unrepublican.

 

 

  

References

Morgan, S.E., (1993). Power to the People. Retrieved from;             https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/12/02/power-to-the-people/