John Hogan
Federalists vs.
Anti-federalists DBQ Essay
A
new Constitution for
When
the Anti-federalists were worried about the Constitution not protecting the
rights of individuals they were very justified.
The rights of the people had long been protected in similar English documents. That was so the government could not take
away basic rights from the people.
Therefore, it only makes sense that just after the American colonists
had won their independence from what they viewed as an oppressive nation that
something would be done to protect the people’s rights. The anonymous writer of An Antifederalist Argues His Case said it best when he said, “There
is no reason…we should…adopt a system which is imperfect or insecure.”
Furthermore, while the Federalists could defeat nearly every point the
Anti-federalists made, this one of the few they could not. The Federalists could not solve the problem
of individuals’ rights with the original Constitution. Those are the reasons the Anti-federalists
were justified in this complaint.
While
the Anti-federalists’ complaint about a lack of protection of basic rights had
substance and was justified, their other complaints did not. Some of their other concerns were that the
President was given too much power and could make himself a king. They also claimed that the national
government had was too controlling of the states’
governments. However, in the Federalist Papers, Federalists
thoroughly slaughtered these arguments.
In these essays it was pointed out that since each branch of the government
would have power over the other two, no one branch could become more powerful
than the others. Furthermore, in A Farmer Speaks for the Constitution the
writer says, “I had been a member of the convention to from our own state
constitution, and had learnt something of the checks and balances of power and
I found them all…with this Constitution.”
For the second argument it was also
pointed out that since the states dealt with local issues and the federal
government with national issues, the national government could never fully
control the states’ governments. It is
for these reasons that the Anti-federalists were wrong in these complaints.
The
basic fact was that the Constitution didn’t protect the basic rights of the
people and that’s why the Anti-federalists were justified in complaining about
this. However, the Constitution was
otherwise virtually perfect and that’s why the Anti-federalists were wrong in
their other complaints.