Constitutional Convention Persuasive Essay

Tim Dever
Period 4
December 2, 2012

Question: How should the delegates to the Philadelphia [Constitutional] Convention have best balanced the power between States and the Federal government?

Thesis: The delegates of the Constitutional Convention could have best balanced the power between the states and the Federal government by better compromising on the ideas of the federalists and Anti-Federalist by weakening the centralized power of the government, and protecting the people’s liberty.

Argument Paragraph: The Constitutional Convention was divided into two groups, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. The federalists were pushing for a more centralized power or government, and a new constitution. They believed that the Articles
The Constitution did not protect the basic human rights that were the goal of the Revolution. It was necessary that the Constitution protected the people from tyranny. The document also provided a system of government that was too closely related to that of Great Britain. The President held too much power just like the King of England. America was becoming their own nightmare. No one man should have enough power to take away an individuals God given rights, and control everything and everyone. The Constitution was on a path of creating a tyrannical monarchy in America, just like in England. The government had all the tendencies to centralize just like a monarchy, which is exactly what the convention was trying to end. The Constitution lacked the security of rights, had the makings of an overly centralized government that could lead to tyranny and it had a major resemblance of aristocracy. Without rights, people are subject to become nothing more then a piece in a monarch’s game. Under the Constitution, the president could have suppressed people’s rights, as they were not
I will use this source to argue what was correct within the Bill of Rights, and which rights were necessary, and why they shouldn’t have been excluded from the Constitution. This will be a major argument in the paper, as it was one of the most evident issues related to the Constitution. My second source is a book from the same series, and it is titled “The Creation of the Constitution.” I will use this source to defend my arguments that the federal constitution created a congress and legislative branch of people that were not unified, and would not get things done, or be able to act and speak upon all the different types of people within each represented state. I will also use it to argue that the congress would become an aristocracy of wealthy men, who could not empathize with citizens of their sate that were not alike them. My third source used in this paper so far, is a journal from the History Reference Center database titled “Confederation, Articles of..” This source will be used to point out the faults and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and argue why they were too weak, and how they should have been fixed, but also to state some things that were good about the articles, and why the Anti-Federalists approved of them. The fourth source I will use is a website called the “Gilder Lehrman