Fujii, Alex
AP US History
Period 3
10/04/13
The Constitution-Balancing Competing Interests During the late 1700s, there were various conflicts within the government of the United States of America. Therefore, the Constitutional Convention was made for the founding fathers to discuss the political and social issues within the Articles of Confederation and to create a whole new government system. The meeting began on May 25th but wasn’t fully officially signed until September of 1787. The revising of the Constitution had to resolve many political issues within the states that caused fear among the governed. One issue was the fear of large states who might be able to take over smaller states. Federalists were the ones to blame for splitting sovereign powers that weren’t delegated to the national government. The smaller states felt as if they had lost the power to govern themselves if a larger state took over. There was tension between the Anti-Federalists and Federalists that revolved mainly around the issues of representation, division of power, and individual rights. The Anti-Federalists were nervous about the thought that more federal power would lead to a monarchy. The Federalists were worried that lack of more federal power would make it impossible to conduct the nation's business or protect our borders and trade disputes. These suspicions had also sparked a fear over a central government, who limited their rights and could be easily overruled because they were weak. Under the previous rule of George III, fear of a strong executive was brewing among the citizens because of how they were mistreated during the revolutionary war. However, fears of being taken over or mistreated by the government was among the people, social issues were also a huge concern in their everyday lives. Socially, the Americans felt that they had been cheated of their rights. They were concerned with the British because of an unwritten constitution which meant that they could change it at any time. Since there was no guarantee of individual rights, the men of property were disgusted with what was going on and forced a mass democracy where they could choose their own leader at their will. Among all social disputes, Slavery was one of the biggest issues. Slaves were still