Question

1. To what extent was there a struggle over ratification of the Constitution by The Federalists and The Anti-Federalists?

2. Why were Americans, particularly Northerners and Southerners, so divided over states rights and the creation of a strong central government?

3. Why was there such a struggle over ratification of the Constitution?

4. What significance can you take from the fact Thomas Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention in the Summer of 1787?

Answer 1

(1). The debate over ratification from 1787 to 1789 was extremely bitter and divided Americans into two factions, the Federalists who supported the new Constitution and the Antifederalists who did not. Federalists and Antifederalists disagreed on a number of issues, as indicated below-

Issue Federalists Antifederalists
Constitution In favour of constitution Against the constitution
Popular sovereignty Feared too much democracy, Feared that the Constitution took too much power away so advocated limited popular from the people
election of federal officials
Federal Power Wanted a strong federal Thought the Constitution gave too much power to the government to hold the nation federal government
together
State Power Believed that states are Believed that states should be more powerful than the ultimately subordinate to the federal government because states are closer to the people
federal government
Bill of Rights Considered unnecessary because Considered necessary because the absence of such a bill state governments already had raises the threat of tyranny
such bills

(2). State’s rights mainly centered around the 10th Amendment, which stated that any rights not explicitly granted to the federal government in the Constitution/Bill of Rights was given to the states. Then came the century long question about what federal bills were constitutional (an example being the Bank of America, with Hamilton vs Jefferson). Among these rights was the idea of the federal government being a compact between the states, meaning that the federal government was simply a structure that was built on the states. Thus, the Southern states developed the idea that any federal laws that they disagreed with they could nullify within their state boundaries, as the state should be more powerful than the federal. When Lincoln disagreed with the Southern states’ nullification of certain laws, the South decided to secede, which evidently led to the Civil War. The North tended to have a “looser” interpretation of the Constitution and wanted a strong national government. They believed that the national government had absolute power and more authority over the country’s issues. Some Northern politicians, like Abraham Lincoln, believed that the United States was one nation and not a collection of independent states. They said the nation could not be separated or divided. The South, on the other hand, supported state’s rights (the idea that the individual states should have more power than the federal government). They read the Constitution
more “strictly” than the northerners and also believed that state governments could nullify (or do away with) federal laws they did not agree with. Most Southerners also believed that because the states had freely created and joined the union (country) they could freely leave it as well.

(3). The problem starts with Article 5 of the Constitution. It provides that an amendment can be proposed either by a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate or by a convention, called into being by Congress, after a request from two-thirds of the states. That’s version A and version B of step one. If an amendment makes it through either one, then comes step two: ratification by three-quarters of the states. In other words, an amendment requires a supermajority twice—the pig must pass through two pythons. By contrast, ordinary legislation requires the approval of a simple majority in each house.The founders made the amendment process difficult because they wanted to lock in the political deals that made ratification of the Constitution possible. Moreover, they recognized that, for a government to function well, the ground rules should be stable. But they also understood that the people will need to change those ground rules as new challenges and problems surface with the passage of time. They didn’t mean for the dead hand of the past to block necessary progress.

(4). The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The point of the event was decide how America was going to be governed.Although the Convention had been officially called to revise the existing Articles of Confederation, many delegates had much bigger plans. Men like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wanted to create a new government rather than fix the existing one. The delegates elected George Washington to preside over the Convention. 70 Delegates had been appointed by the original states to attend the Constitutional Convention, but only 55 were able to be there.
Thomas Jefferson didn’t sign it because he was not appointed as ‘delegates’ to the Constitutional Convention, representing their individual states and he was not appointed as ‘delegates’ because he was serving as ‘diplomat’ abroad. Jefferson had been sent by the Continental Congress in 1784 to Paris where a year later he ‘succeeded’ Franklin as the 2nd United States Minister to France (a position which he served until September of 1789) he left Paris in September of 1789 intending to return but Washington (the newly elected president) invited him to become the nation’s 1st Secretary of State Ben Franklin who had been replaced in Paris by Jefferson did manage to get back to America in time to be a ‘delegate’ to the Convention so he did ‘sign’ the Constitution.