The Constitution

The United States Constitution is a document of much significance. It replaced the Articles of Confederation due to the fact that they did not meet the appropriate standards of our quickly evolving nation. Numerous years have passed since its creation, and over time historians have taken the time to make judgment on it; some positive and some negative. Amongst many historians, there is the question of the documents meaning and its origin. All historians believe that the Constitution was written in means of helping the common good of the people, however some believe it favored a certain wealthy class and it wasn’t fair for the complete population. This is where Federalists and Anti-Federalists came into play. Federalists were typically of higher class who owned property and wanted a stronger central government for land security purposes. This group included merchants, financers, and manufacturers. The Anti-Federalists were of lower class including small farmers, debtors, and laborers who feared a strong central government. National, Progressive and Consensus historians including; John Fiske, Carl Becker, Charles Beard, Merrill Jensen, Robert Brown, Forrest McDonald, and Gordon Woods took part in reviewing the constitution itself. All of which had their own observations and ideas with varying reasons why they came to the conclusions that they did.
As time passes, views of the Constitution will obviously differ based on the time period historians are currently living in. In the late 19th century Nationalist historians thought of the document as the logical culmination of the Revolution and move toward the God-given progress of Anglo-Saxons. John Fiske was a part of this time period, and he wrote “The Critical Period of American History (1888)”. In this, he described the nation as undergoing internal chaos as well as not having any backbone other than a weak central government to fall on. With the help of the newly written Constitution the nation was able to be saved