A Most Enviable Condition essays

A Most Enviable Condition essays Looking back on our worlds history, no event seemed more inevitable than the American Revolution. As Thomas Paine put it it was simply a matter of common sense that an island could not rule a continent. The American Revolution was started on the basis of republican principles, which included a hatred of monarchy and the suspicion of any centralized political power. The Articles of Confederation were created which reflected those republican principles by creating a weak central authority that had no real power to rule or discipline the citizenry. However, there was much debate on what kind of role the government should play in the United States. Two political parties were quickly formed the Federalists and the Republicans. The Federalists, led by George Washington, supported a strong central government with sufficient powers to enforce national laws while the Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, were against any central government for fear of any form of monarchy that would jeopard ize individual liberties. Soon a constitution was drafted that seemed to solve an impossible problem combine a government with sufficient powers to enforce national laws while staying true to the republican principles of 1776. Some saw the Constitution as a betrayal of the American Revolution. However advocates of the Constitution found its accommodation of liberty and power with realistic compromises in order to uphold the requirements of a national domain to be just. As illustrated in the stories within Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, the founders of our country resolved this tension between individual liberty and effective central authority by balancing limited personal freedoms with a semi-potent government capable of upholding national laws. These founding brothers preserved this balance through its perilous infancy by a combination of personal decency and friendship. The Constitution granted personal freedo...