The Struggle For Political Balance

These different views on government made many people think hard on what type of government they wanted. In the end, the Federalist’s point of view won. Today, this type of government still exists. It made one of the

Once America was free of British rule, U.S citizens were on their own. They had no form of government to keep them together. The Articles of Confederation were the American’s first attempt at their own government system.

As the young colonies of America broke away from their mother country and began to grow and develop into an effective democratic nation, many changes occurred. As the democracy began to grow, two main political parties developed, the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists.      Each party had different views on how the government should be run. The Jeffersonian Republicans believed in strong state governments, a weak central government, and a strict construction of the Constitution. The Federalists opted for a powerful central government with weaker state governments, and a loose interpretation of the Constitution. Throughout the years, the political parties have grown, developed, and even dispersed into

America is an incredibly vast, diverse country, and has been this way for hundreds of years. The sheer size of America, even when it was only composed of thirteen states with a total population of nearly three million people (Brutus, essay 1, p. 64), concerned many Americans in the 1780s, due to this inquiry: was America simply too large for a republican style government to work? Many anti-federalists claimed that republics could only work on a small scale, while the federalists believed that having a large republic was the only way to go and would be beneficial to the public good. Before this time, history furnished no examples of a well-functioning republic as big as America, so the federalists and anti federalists were stepping into a completely new untouched territory.

In the late 1700s, the United States had began to split into two factions: Federalists and Antifederalists. Factions are groups of citizens united by a common interest. The reasoning behind the differing views of how the government works across the world was best said by Locke “Men are equal in a natural sense, but society establishes many dimensions that are unequal”. (Barbour and Wright, 2017). In the states, Federalists wanted a strong central government while anti-federalists wanted a weak one. “The Georgians, for example, wanted a strong central authority to provide military protection for their huge, underpopulated state against the Creek Confederacy; Jerseymen and Connecticuters wanted to escape from economic bondage to New York; the Virginians hoped to establish a system which would give that great state its rightful place in the councils of the republic” (Roche, 800). The one thing they agreed on was having George Washington as president. George Washington tried to be a neutral leader of the United States and suggested for the states to stay together rather than divide into factions. “Thomas Jefferson is credited as stating: “North and South will hang together if they have you to hang on””(Jamison, 2016).

Have you ever herd of government parties? The original parties of America were the Democratic Republicans and the Federalists. The Federalists were made by Alexander Hamilton. The DEmocratic Republicans were made by thomas Jefferson and John Adams. As you can imagine these parties had very different views for the new country. They disagreed on a lot of things, including whether they should have a strong state government or a strong federal government.

Two competing political philosophies have always existed throughout the United States’ relatively short history: one seeking to increase the power of the central government, and one seeking to decrease it. During the 1800s these two conflicting philosophies were acted out by the Federalist and the Democratic Republican parties, respectively. The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, advocated the importance of a strong central government in leading the country forward, while the Democratic Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, promoted increasing the common man’s role in government. Although both political parties had good intentions for the future of the United States, the Federalist Party was much more effective at uniting the American

In 1782 Americans won their independence from Britain in the American Revolution. After the colonies won their independence, Americans created the Constitution. Its purpose was to replace the Articles of Confederation and solve its problems and more importantly to bring the states together under a single document creating a stronger union of all the states. There was one problem though: there were a few fundamental issues that the framers could not agree on. In the early nineteenth century the United States began to split, but as the mid-century came around, people became more polarized in their views and the union started to separate drastically. During the period of 1850, until 1861 when the Confederate States of America was formed, the

In 1776, the Unites States finally gained its independence from Great Britain, leaving the US to face new challenges about governance and international relations. The new states, which were originally thirteen colonies would now have to come together to try to be a player with the world biggest super powers. The unification of the colonies as an independent nation also meant that he people must be unified as well culturally, politically, and economically. As an independent nation, the Unites States would face many successful, yet challenging events resulting in the unification of the American identity. Early international relations would be shaped by the desire to gain international respect while integrating the crucial American culture of religion, race, and honor.

People had their own views on the ways America would have to do to survive, federalists had stronger foots in the government and began to

Since the birth of the United States, the issue over how strong the national government should be has always been a controversial one. While some believe that decentralization will inevitably lead to chaos, others contend that a powerful central government will inevitably become a tyranny. Although the United States would wholeheartedly embrace the idea of a loose alliance of independent states at first, the many glaring problems that the nation faced under the Articles of Confederation would quickly change the minds of many Americans. Indeed, the nation 's confederation system of government was eventually rejected and replaced by federalism, a political philosophy that calls for a sharing of power between the national government and the

Partisan politics in America surfaced after the Declaration of Independence was signed and the debate over the path the country was going to take began. Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury and loose interpreter of the Constitution, wanted the United States to be a pioneer of world trade and a manufacturing hub. Whereas, Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U.S. President and strict interpreter of the Constitution, was used to a rural America and saw no reason to fraternize on an international level. In order to maintain world power status as Hamilton desired, a stronger, larger central government is required than that of a mainly agrarian economy. That is why the Federalists wished to loosely abide by the Constitution; they wanted a stronger country by means that were unconstitutional by stating that the powers explicitly designated to the Federal Government could be broadly interpreted. Jefferson, James Madison, and other Republicans, of course did not want anything not set forth by our founding fathers to take place. The reason why Jefferson believed in this role of government was because America finally just declared their independence and Federalists were attempting to construct another Great Britain. After all, did Americans not just evade from an authority who made up rules as they saw fit?

The Constitution placed a great deal of power back into the hands of a strong, central government much like that of a monarchy. “The extraordinarily powerful national government that emerged from Philadelphia possessed far more than the additional congressional powers that were required to solve the United States’ difficulties” (Wood 151). The U.S. government was extremely revolutionary though, in the way that it viewed and handled sovereignty. “Unlike the British in relation to their House of Commons, the American people never surrendered to any political institution…their full and final sovereign power” (Wood 160). Throughout the entire American struggle to establish a suitable government, the citizens maintained their ability to influence policy in a way that the British never could.

Although Thomas Jefferson swept the election of 1800 and witnessed the collapse of the Federalist Party in 1812, it was Alexander Hamilton’s political and economic views which proved predominant in the subsequent 19th century. The expansion of capitalism and industrialization– the development of new railroads, canals, and manufacturing factories in the North– not only contributed to the end of Thomas Jefferson’s Agrarian Yeoman era, but ultimately proved crucial to the Union’s victory during the Civil War. Nevertheless, by no means had Thomas Jefferson’s views vanished from the political landscape of the United States by 1865. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Indian Removal Acts in 1830, and Homestead Acts in 1862 were all early examples of Jefferson’s geopolitical vision for territorial expansion. By comparing the advancement of territorial expansion, development of a capitalist economy, and democratization of society and politics, this paper posits that although Thomas Jefferson’s geopolitical views were still present in the political landscape by the late nineteenth century, it was Hamilton’s economic and political views which were prevalent.

In one of the stories about the American founding, settlers that came to America inherited a “vast, unpopulated land” . Due to the abundance of land, settlers did not have to fight for resources . Therefore, everyone had had an equal opportunity and it followed that there was no need for a hierarchical feudalistic system in order to distribute the land . This in turn became the foundation of American liberal thought. Additionally, the settlers had also adopted some ancient republican ideas and this led to the creation of a complex American political thought with characteristics of both liberalism and republicanism. Although both paradigms seem to contradict each other to a large extent and hence one would expect that both paradigms may be unable to coexist in the same political environment, in this essay, I argue that in American politics, liberalism and republicanism coexist, interact and overlap to a large extent. This is illustrated in the adoption of both paradigms by the settlers of the New World. For this essay, I will focus specifically on the Puritan settlers and how Puritanism involved aspects of both republicanism and liberalism. Additionally, I will illustrate how both paradigms are also present to a large extent in the respective, uniquely American arguments of both the anti-federalists and federalists and in the Constitution and its 10 amendments.