The Founding Fathers

The United States' Founding Fathers had a difficult task in creating a new type of government that would protect peoples rights and states all while giving the states enough powers for the federal government. The Constitution was approved by the states and passed into law after arguments and solutions at the Constitutional Convention.

The Founding Fathers helped ratify the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention. Some of the Founding Fathers towards the Constitution were Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. Both men had very strong beliefs about what should be done to help approve the Constitution and what should've not been done. Hamilton was a strong supporter of the Constitution. He had a broad or "loose" interpretation of the Constitution. Hamilton believed that federal government had wide-ranging powers due to the clause allowing Congress to make any "which shall be necessary and proper." Jefferson accepted the Constitution, but was concerned the president was too powerful. He promoted the Bill of Rights to protect individual rights. Also he had a narrow "strict" interpretation of the Constitution, and believed that powers not specifically given to the federal government belonged "to the states respectively, or to the people." The constitutional issue was that all the Founding Fathers had many different suggestions and opinions, so it took a while for all these men to come to an agreement. This brought many issues and arguments during the process. One of the arguments were the national bank system which was apart of Hamilton's economic plan. The national bank was to win support of the business community, and help out the government in financial dealings. The bank funded by both federal government and wealthy investors which issued paper money and other government funds. Hamilton and the Federalists supported the national bank because they believed it would encourage investors and business community to support the government. On the other hand,