When delegates gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 for the Constitutional Convention, they were trying to solve two problems at once.
The Articles of Confederation (1781-1789), America’s first constitution, had given the national government so little power that it could not reliably raise tax revenue or respond effectively to unrest.
Shays’ Rebellion in 1786-87 exposed this weakness starkly. At the same time, the delegates had not forgotten why they had rebelled against Britain in the first place. They still feared a distant, unaccountable government that could tax and rule them without meaningful consent.
Much of their thinking drew on the French philosopher Montesquieu, whose book The Spirit of the Laws (1748) argued that liberty was best protected by dividing government into separate branches.
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay later popularised this reasoning for the American public in the Federalist Papers (1787-88), written to persuade New York to ratify the new Constitution.
| Key terms Federalism: the division of political power between a national government and state or regional governments, each with authority over certain matters, such as the US federal government and the fifty state governments. Separation of powers: the principle that legislative, executive and judicial power should be held by different, independent institutions, rather than concentrated in one body. Checks and balances: the specific powers each branch of government holds over the others, such as the presidential veto or judicial review, designed to stop any one branch dominating. Limited government: the idea that government’s power is restricted to only what is specifically granted to it, leaving the rest to individuals or lower levels of government. Faction: Madison’s term, in Federalist No. 10, for what we would now often call a political party or interest group. He meant citizens united by a shared interest that may work against the rights of others or the good of the whole community. |
In Federalist No. 10, Madison tackled the danger of faction directly. Rather than trying to eliminate factions, which he thought impossible in a free society, Madison took a different approach. He argued that a large republic with many competing interests would dilute the power of any single faction to dominate.
It is worth being clear that the Founding Fathers did not design a principle of bipartisanship into the Constitution at all, because the word ‘party’ does not appear anywhere in its text.
In his Farewell Address of 1796, George Washington explicitly warned against “the baneful effects of the spirit of party,” hoping the new republic could avoid organised political parties altogether. His hope did not survive contact with reality: by the election that followed his retirement, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans were already competing for power.
Analysis: The Founders’ aims were shaped by two contrasting fears: an overly weak central government, seen under the Articles of Confederation, and an overly powerful one, remembered from British rule. Federalism, separation of powers and limited government were all, in different ways, attempts to hold both fears in balance at once.
Evaluation: Judged by their own aims, the Founders were only partially successful. Their structural safeguards against concentrated power have proved durable, but their hope of avoiding organised political parties failed almost immediately, showing the limits of designing a political culture through legal text alone.
| Check your understanding 1. Explain why the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation influenced the design of the Constitution. You could: focus on a specific weakness, such as the inability to raise tax revenue or respond to Shays’ Rebellion, and explain what the Founders changed in response. 2. To what extent did the Founders succeed in avoiding political parties? You should: state their aim using Washington’s Farewell Address, give a brief account of what actually happened, and reach a judgement about how far the outcome matched the intention. |
