The following is an extract from Lesson 2 of An Introduction to the U.S. Congress. You can get the whole thing here: https://cffad.org/topic/#congress-part-1
Some of the framers were worried that the new national government could become too tyrannical if its powers were too centralized. Others worried it might not be powerful enough. Reflecting concerns raised in Lesson 1, three big questions stood out:
- Would the federal government be strong enough to deal with external and internal threats?
- Would the federal government respect the sovereignty of the states?
- Would a new federal government in a territory as large as the original 13 states be too distant from its citizens to understand their needs?
In the end, they came up with a two-part solution to the dangers of overly centralized power. We will cover those in the next several weeks.
