of the Founding Fathers--they created in the Constitution a document that was flexible enough to accommodate new views and circumstances. The evolution of the system has been positive in nature, and in effect the American system has tended toward increased equality, increased fairness, and increased opportunity for all. Another way of stating this is that the American system has become more like the ideal that the Constitution has held out for it. In the beginning, the governmental structure created was not the equitable system of equality of opportunity and treatment before the law that has often been claimed. The Constitution as ratified in 1787 did not apply equally to all the people in the new United States. Many provisions did not apply to women, for instance, and slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of representation. Property owners were given greater power and more rights than those who did not own property. Yet, the document also reflected a desire for balance and sought a number of means to accomplish this, from the checks and balances between branches to the larger balance between federal prerogatives and states' rights. Different groups benefited more from the Constitution in 1787, but as noted, the power of the document has been that over time inequities have been addressed. Perhaps not all have been eliminated, but the inherent imbalances of 1787 have been largely removed.
In the debate over the Constitution, the Federalists sought a strong central government and the Antifederalists sought to protect the rights of states. The Federalists clearly achieved the federal government they sought, and the document they helped write served to draw more and more power to this central government over time, as noted. The Antifederalists did not completely lose, however, and they managed to preserve the concept of states' rights in several ways. To protect individual rights from the tyranny o...