the unending tug of war..............

 

From the outset, the convention reflected a pointed truce in the unending tug of war between those who believed in the necessity of a functioning union and those who feared the encroaching despotism of a national government and clung to states' rights; between fervent slaveholders and ardent abolitionists; between those who worried that small states would be smothered by the political juggernaut of the big states and those who worried about the tyranny of the minority; and between radicals who wanted a clear repudiation of the past and traditionalists who wanted only to tinker at the margins.  The reality was that after more than five generations of laying down roots in America, the exigencies of life had only sharpened the old insistence upon demands for personal liberty and equality.  Now the Americans found themselves arguing both for the historic and chartered rights they had once enjoyed as Englishmen, and for the timeless and universal rights of man.

      It was complicated, it was messy, and somehow everything came together.  Politicians all, the delegates compromised repeatedly.

-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800