The United States Constitution has received much criticism, both before and after its ratification in 1789. A wide range of thinkers from all eras of the republic have offered criticisms on the nature , the scope, and even the finer details of the Constitution, sometimes providing solutions that they themselves believe are better. In reality, however, two major schools of criticism emerge: those that condemn the implications of having a document like the Constitution supreme over the nation, and those that condemn specific parts and clauses of the document itself. Both criticisms based on the idea that the Constitution is pro-slavery and those that object to the nationalist nature of the document are unfounded. One of the main criticisms of the details of the Constitution stems from its inclusion of slavery. William Lloyd Garrison, a Massachusetts abolitionist and writer of The Liberator, argued that the Constitution was actually written as a pro-slavery document. Citing the three-fifths clause, Garrison disputed that the Constitution was invalid from its origin, since the initial compromise set aside morality and the humanities in favor of politics (385). Garrison argued that the founders were “sinful,” “weak,” and “trampled underfoot their own… Declaration, that all men are created equal” in proclaiming slavery legal and including it in the Constitution (385). In Garrison's view, including slavery in the Constitution directly contradicted the rights to life, liberty, and property it promised. Since Garrison believed that the Constitution itself was invalid, he offered to his readers that a union was not worth preserving with slavery, because if the South were to secede, it would be a weak government that could easily be overthrown by slaves, upon… ....middle of paper...than a smaller-scope government, which allows representatives to deliberate on policy initiatives and make a valid decision (Caesar 85). Third, the moral and religious homogeneity advocated by the Anti-Federalists is not in fact necessary to maintain the republic. A government based on the Constitution, they argued, should regulate conduct and not “directly shape character” (Caesar 85). The arguments advanced by the Federalists successfully undermined the validity of those advanced by the Anti-Federalists. Both the Anti-Federalists and those who interpreted the Constitution as promoting slavery were ultimately unfounded in their criticisms of the document that successfully governed the American republic for hundreds of years. While both types of criticism of the Constitution may have been well developed, neither offered a truly fully founded condemnation.