Hamilton & Jefferson on the American Constitution
The merits of the new American Constitution wer
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The merits of the new American Constitution were presented and defended by "Publius" in The Federalist Papers, written during 1787-1788 (Hampsher-Monk 198-199). Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay alternatively assumed the role of Publius, and together rebutted criticisms made of the Constitution by other American patriots. The men who opposed the Constitution's unconditional ratification became known as the Anti-Federalists. Though the Anti-Federalists generally agreed that the Constitution was well conceived, they were unprepared to accept the document so long as it lacked a national Bill of Rights (Dry). By 1791 the first ten amendments to the Constitutionùthe prevailing Bill of Rightsùhad been ratified by the states. In the years that followed, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson would stand in opposition to one anotherùmuch the way the Federalists and Anti-Federalists had doneùon issues concerning the strength of the Federal government, and the individual citizen's need for protections from that strength. The legacy of these debates over proper governance in the United States extends to this day. The "great unresolved issue of American political life," writes Ethan B. Kapstein in the World Policy Journal, is "that of the relationship between the national and state governments (35)." The ideological gulf separating the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists concerned this issue, as did the debate that occupied Jefferson and Hamilton for the re
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government that was ever written (Hampsher-Monk 200)." But in the era of the American Revolution, Hamilton and Jefferson each concealed their allegiances to certain contradictory democratic ideals. In the era of the American Constitution, these contradictions would grow stark.
For Hamilton's part, he would press his belief that in order to enhance the security and prosperity of the fledgling United States, a strong federal authority was needed. The Bill of Rights already accommodated suspicions that the Federal government was potentially dangerous by checking its ability to become tyrannical and impinge upon the freedoms of the individual. According to Hamilton, the bedrock of constitutional law lay in the government's ability to invoke a doctrine of implied powers (Kapstein 37).
For the Federal government to function properly, Hamilton argued, it must operate freely in those areas where it is not expressly forbidden by the Constitution to do so. Defending this view, Hamilton stated that this doctrine of implied powers meant that if:
"the end be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, and if the measure have an obvious relation to that end, and is not forbidden by any particular provision of the Con
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Approximate Word count = 1427
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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The merits of the new American Constitution wer
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