After the revolution the Unites States of America found itself in an ironic political situation. The revolution had been fought against a "tyrannical" central government, which was greatly resented on the issue of unfair taxation. Much of the tax issue before the revolution was based on the need of the British government to come up with the cash needed to pay of the debt acquired in defending the American colonies during the French and Indian war. However after the revolution the new United States found itself shackled to a large debt acquired in forcing the British out of the thirteen colonies and with a government, governing under the authority of the Articles of Confederation, without adequate ability to tax and put the government on a solid financial foundation. The powers of the central government needed to be increased so as to allow for the realities of managing not just a revolutionary effort but an entire nation, yet a government with such power might be seen as a new tyranny and the power to tax might engender a collapse of the revolutionary spirit of unity and destroy the new nation. There had also been a very curious geographic switch.

Before the French and Indian war the French had claimed most of North America north of the Saint Lawrence River, while the British controlled most of the Atlantic coastal region south of the French areas. However west of the Appalachian Mountains the British claims traveled west while the French northern claims ran south and from these cross claims conflicts arose. From an English colonial perspective there were hostile neighbors to the north and west and again after the revolution American found that there remained enemies in these same areas. The areas which had been French were now British but unlike the pre-revolutionary era the United States lacked an overseas ally to assist in its defense of the border regions. Without a strong central government how could this new nation hope to stay survive and stay united, but did not such a government itself

constitute a threat

In the centuries since the American revolution the United States government under the Constitution has served as the model for many new governments around the world, but in 1787 the United States had no such successful model of a large successful representative democracy to emulate. This emphasizes how the government designed by the Constitutional Convention was such a marvel of innovation and original political thought. Of those who worked on the Constitution the most important hand belonged to James Madison and his most important and original political concept was highly contrary to conventional political thinking of his age. It was thought that the task of governing a large, complex country with a republican form of government was simply unworkable. The age old idea was that a democratic or republican government can only work when applied to a small community of like minded individuals where all the citizens are similarly wealth or of like political philosophy. In a government where the majority votes or officials vote for it how are the rights of a minority guaranteed against the will of the majority? How does the government protect landowners or the wealthy from having their assets seized by a jealous legislature or the life and liberty of an un-popular politician from the vengeance of those in power? Madison’s solution was elegant and convincing, he argued that a large republic by virtue of its many differing constituencies protected the rights of minorities by its complex makeup. In a nation such as the United States of America formed by the former colonies which varied greatly in location, economies, religions, and history which were populated with peopled not just from England but from all over the old world a tyrannical majority would be impossible. The nation might be governed by special interests, parties, or regions but only when such groups compromised their varying perspectives. Such a system made it improbable that a majority would invade the rights of other because of a myriad of overlapping mutual interests, "politics make strange bed-fellows!"

After the new government was designed and then implemented the task of defending the nation and securing the future was still no small task. There was no guarantee that Britain would continue to respect American independence and try to nibble away at the borders. France, which had been crucial to revolutionary success, was still a player on the world scene, might certainly try to use the United States as a pawn as it grappled with Britain for power in the world and struggled through the throes of its own revolution. For the United States, a tiny, debt ridden, experimental nation alone on the edge a continental wilderness, the world was still a very dangerous place.

While the framers of the Constitution of the United States anticipated many of the requirements that the new government would need to fulfill in order to provide an effective plan of government for the fledgling nation; there was one political development that was clearly not anticipated, the rise of political parties. This was evident in the original rules by which the President and Vice-President were originally selected, an essentially one party method. The electors in the Electoral College each received one vote for an executive branch candidate and the winner became President while the runner up became Vice-President. The idea was simply that the candidates would essentially be of the same mind politically and that the Vice-President would serve smoothly along side the President. This concept did not take into consideration the idea of a campaign wherein candidates would run for office against each other and be probable political adversaries or possibly enemies. In the first election everyone expected Washington to be the President and this design feature was not an issue, but in the first contested election parties had formed and John Adams ended up with a Vice-President, Thomas Jefferson, who was the leader of the other party. This method of selection was also a significant factor in the election of 1800 wherein even though The Democratic-Republicans won both executive offices the selection fell to the House of Representatives because both Jefferson and Burr received the same number of votes. There were unfortunate consequences as the shock waves of this election related to the death of Alexander Hamilton and possibly the eventual treason of Aaron Burr. Of course even this flaw demonstrated the careful design of the Constitution when separate ballots were introduced with the passage of the twelfth amendment in 1804. If errors were found in the Constitution; it could be modified.

In reading the Constitution it becomes apparent that much of the structure of the federal government was not actually specified in detail. Both houses of Congress were left to determine their own rules of proceeding, the executive branch would only acquire its various departments through follow up legislation but the Judiciary was by far the least structured of the three branches of the government. All the Constitution essentially says about the Supreme Court was that "the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court." While this clause implies the superiority of the "supreme Court" the purpose of this court is otherwise relatively unspecified. The Major function of the Supreme Court has become that of judicial review or the right of the Supreme Court to judge a law unconstitutional. This power, which has historically possessed most of the court’s attention, was the innovation of Chief Justice John Marshal in the case Marbury v. Madison in 1803. John Marshal, a Federalist, sought this power for the court to maintain a Federalist presence after the and of Federalist power following the "Revolution of 1800." Thomas Jefferson believed that this power existed but he wanted it to remain with the state legislatures.

When Thomas Jefferson and James Madison introduced the Kentucky and Virginia resolves to protest what they considered Federalist excesses contained in the Alien and Sedition Acts, they let the concept of states rights as a foil to the power of the federal government out of the bag for the first time after the adoption of the Constitution. Without knowing the consequences, this concept of a state being able to declare a federal statute unconstitutional, also known as the right of "nullification," would lead to the "Nullification Crisis" during the administration of Andrew Jackson. This crisis would be a pre-staging of what is sometime called the Second American Revolution, more generally known as The Civil War.