Constitution

The Constitution is the rock of American government and the supreme law of the land. When drafting the Constitution, the founding fathers had to consider how they were going to make things such as limited government and competitive individualism work for the future. They knew that it would not be perfect, but they had to come up with something to replace the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution and the Constitutional Convention both embody the nature of Americans.

            During the Constitutional Convention, the founding fathers really had to focus on how they were going to make the government work, not only for the next few years, but for the lifetime of the nation. One principal that they had keep in their minds well drafting the Constitution was the principal of limited government. The founders did a pretty good job of this. They created three different branches so that no one branch would be too powerful. They also created checks and balances so that no one branch could attempt to give themselves more power, and also could not do anything without the approval of the other branches. The founders also were tasked with deciding on citizenship and democracy. The founders struggled with these decisions because different states wanted different things. For the most part, everyone agreed that only white, property owning males would be able to participate in government, but there were issues when it came to who was a citizen and how representation would be divided. The smaller states wanted equal representation in Congress, while the larger states wanted representation based on population. One they reached a compromise, creating two houses, one based on population, and one having equal representation; the issue of who counted in the population arose. Of course, the slave holding states wanted for the slaves to count in their population, and the non slave holding states did not want for slaves to count in the population. That resulted in another compromise, the three-fifths compromise. The founding fathers knew that they could not have the perfect Constitution, and they knew that compromises would have to be made.

            This of course resulted in flaws in their pursuit of ordered liberty. But because the founding fathers knew that the Constitution was not perfect, they built in a way to change it. The Amendments gave the government an opportunity to change things in the Constitution. And shortly after the Constitution was signed, the government passed the first ten amendments to the Constitution, also known as the Bill of Rights.      

           

            Overall the Founding Fathers did everything they could to make the best government that they could in the circumstances. And many would say they did a pretty good job.