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Tyranny Dbq

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How Did The Constitution Guard Against Tyranny? Shay’s Rebellion. The Boston Massacre. Lexington and Concord. The Revolutionary War. Colonists tried their best to get away from King George III, a tyrant, by organizing different kinds of protests. In 1787, fifty-five delegates met in Philadelphia to fix the current government system. The problem was that the existing government, the Articles of Confederation, was too weak. The Articles of Confederation did not provide a chief executive, a court system, or any way to force a state to pay taxes. A new constitution was needed to pull the nation together. What did the constitution do to avoid tyranny? Tyranny, according to James Madison, means the accumulation of all power… in the same hands, whether …show more content…

According to Federalist Paper #51, Document A, James Madison stated, “The different governments will each control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” the central government doesn’t have complete control over the states, and the states don’t have complete control over the central government. This prevents tyranny because one government, state or central, can take over. The second guard against tyranny was the Separation of Powers, which means the powers of the government that are divided among separate branches; the legislative, executive, and judiciary branch. In Federalist Paper #47 from James Madison, Document B, “Liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct.” Each branch can do something to override, or go against, another branches decision(s), so that no person, or group, gets too much power. The third guard against tyranny was checks and balances, which means the way one branch stops another from getting to powerful. In Document C, Federalist Paper #51 states, “the three branches should not be so far separated as to no constitutional control over each other.” Checks and balances makes sure that one group in the government can review a decision and can’t do anything

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