The Argument Review

"The American Creation" by Joseph Ellis is a book written about the constitution and the wars. Chapter 3 titled "The Argument" talks about the act of arguing and compromise, and how they basis of our constitution. 

The Founding Fathers, in the midst of writing the constitution, seemed to think they couldn't agree on anything. It seemed like all they did was argue and bicker, which had never happened much before. The only person that knew it was constructive was James Madison. Madison realized the arguing is what they needed. The best efforts and ideas came from those arguments. 

The articles of Confederation was a main part of the arguing. Madison realized how they were failing so he wanted to make a change. Thus sparked the idea of the constitution. He wrote it and presented it to George Washington himself. The two of them stormed into a meeting and bestowed it to the Philadelphia Convention. The convention thought it was rubbish, but after reading through it sparked a couple people's minds. "For it made argument itself the answer by creating a framework in which federal and state authority engaged in an ongoing negotiation for supremacy, thereby making the constitution, like history itself, an argument without end" as said on page 91. Many of the people disagreed with what the constitution said, claiming that the constitution was to similar to Britain, in the fact that they wanted a stronger federal government. "Madison shifted his ground to become chief advocate for the very argument he opposed in Philadelphia: namely, that the Constitution institutionalized a unique form of shared sovereignty" (page 118). 

One person that stuck by Madison's side was Alexander Hamilton. They wrote "Publius", which was a collection of 85 essays, together with an assistants from John Jay. Another instance was, "Hamilton and Madison were forced by the political exigencies of the moment to frame their argument on behalf of the Constitution." Madison wanted a superior federal government rather than state. Hamilton was more of a nationalist and didn't want states at all. "they embraced the very ambiguity they had condemned as a fatal weakness of the Constitution as its central strength.   

James Madison also came to the conclusion that we needed a way to get rid of the big majority. The majority is a giant group of people that believed the same way and took chances away from others, they were often involved with interest groups. Now Madison must have seen insane for believing that we needed to split this up. It's what the people want right? Well the people aren't always right. I mean no we can see what happened in World War 2 with the Nazis. So in order to break up the majority he wanted to create thousands of interest groups. So in doing that he gave other people a chance. 

The government created two divisions. The Federalists and the AntiFederalists. The Federalists believed in power to the Federal Government. The AntiFederalists believed in modern revisions of the Articles of Confederation, but still more power to the states. Madison believe their would be no middle ground between the two matters. He was quoted saying its a "take it or leave it" situation. The AntiFederalists believed it was to close to Britain. They also had a great distrust for anyone that tried to take the rights away from the people. The only problem with this is that corruption is almost inevitable.