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Constitution and in the midst of the crisis of nullification, James Madison reaffirmed the centrality of federalism while writing the preface to what would become his “Notes on the Federal Convention”.
The federal system certainly was important to James Madison and his contemporaries, and it has been important to succeeding generations of Americans who lived their lives and struggled with collective issues and concerns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Numerous ideas on government emanated from European and American colonial writings and were reformulated during the American founding era. It was in this period, as the thirteen colonies gained independence from Greta Britain, that Americans wrote state constitutions, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The founding of an American constitutional republic in the eighteenth century with a federal system of democratic government attracts the attention of thoughtful citizens today not only in the United Sates but also those who are attempting to establish constitutional democracy in the other nations. FEDERALISTS’ VIEW In contrast, the Federalists viewed both levels of government to be responsible directly to the people, as creators of both their state and national governments. Moreover, Federalists believed that a large “extended republic” was the prescription necessary to save the republican experiment that had been fought for during the American Revolution and nearly lost during the critical period of the 1780s under the Articles of Confederation. The Federalist constituted a distinguished and original American contribution to political thought. The Federalist established the standards for republicanism, natural rights, and a government operating under a written constitution. States’ rights may be defined as “the prerogative power of a state to exercise its inherent authority.”(Written by Fredrick D. Drake and Lynn R. Nelson-States Rights and American Federalism.)
The federal system certainly was important to James Madison and his contemporaries, and it has been important to succeeding generations of Americans who lived their lives and struggled with collective issues and concerns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Numerous ideas on government emanated from European and American colonial writings and were reformulated during the American founding era. It was in this period, as the thirteen colonies gained independence from Greta Britain, that Americans wrote state constitutions, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The founding of an American constitutional republic in the eighteenth century with a federal system of democratic government attracts the attention of thoughtful citizens today not only in the United Sates but also those who are attempting to establish constitutional democracy in the other nations. FEDERALISTS’ VIEW In contrast, the Federalists viewed both levels of government to be responsible directly to the people, as creators of both their state and national governments. Moreover, Federalists believed that a large “extended republic” was the prescription necessary to save the republican experiment that had been fought for during the American Revolution and nearly lost during the critical period of the 1780s under the Articles of Confederation. The Federalist constituted a distinguished and original American contribution to political thought. The Federalist established the standards for republicanism, natural rights, and a government operating under a written constitution. States’ rights may be defined as “the prerogative power of a state to exercise its inherent authority.”(Written by Fredrick D. Drake and Lynn R. Nelson-States Rights and American Federalism.)