Fathers Of The Founding Fathers

The Convention decided that freedom for property would result in the liberty for all men. Such that the Declaration of Independence was agreed upon by the Fathers as ?all men are created equal,? but only as a legal, not as a political or psychological proposition. The main emphasis was the equality between American and the Britons back home.

When asked if the Founding Fathers were democratic reformers, the likely response is that yes, they were, because they believed in democracy and strove to create a nation that would be successfully governed by the people. Although this answer may be correct, the debate between historians on this subject shows that the motives of the Founding Fathers cannot be so easily discerned. According to historian Alfred F. Young, the Founding Fathers were not democratic reformers because they were elites and did not represent the interests of the general public, because they admired the British model of a strong national government that protected the wealthy from the people, and because they only included democratic accommodations to ensure that the people

The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action, written by John P. Roche, addressed the difficulty that the Founding Fathers had in constructing the U.S. Constitution because of the high level of stress they received and the limited amount of time that they had to carry out the formation of this document while keeping the best interest of the country as a priority. John P. Roche starts of by commenting on why the creation of the Constitution was so effective and how the Articles of Confederation benefitted the ratification of the new U.S. Government. As it turns out, the delegates elected to attend Pennsylvania were mainly people who had served in Congress and had experience in the weakness of the Articles in granting too little power to the national government. In addition, the delegates were appointed by the state legislatures, not by the people, as justified by the Articles of Confederation.

In comparing Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists, The Declaration of Independence, and U.S. Constitution, it is evident that the basis of all three documents is the idea that all human beings possess God-given fundamental rights and that government is created to protect those rights. The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, is the first of the three documents penned. This is important because it defined the rights of liberty and equality of all American citizens as outlined in John Locke’s natural law thesis (Martin, page 113). In addition to providing an itemized account of the grievances colonist’s held against King George III of England, it served to justify the colonist’s quest for independence and separation from British rule. The Declaration of Independence conveyed to the crown that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, which among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Founders’ of the New World understood that their pursuit of liberties and autonomy specified in the Declaration of Independence could not come to fruition without instituting decrees. In 1787, the U.S. Constitution, was written to replace the Articles of Confederation with a better defined series of stringent laws that would legally uphold the freedoms and privileges established in the Declaration of Independence. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in

On June of 1776, the Declaration of Independence was born. Drawn up by Thomas Jefferson and based on the works of John Locke, the general purpose of the document was to clarify that governments have conditional, not absolute authority over the people; that human beings possess natural rights that can’t be taken from them and government is created to protect those rights. The phrases “unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and “all men are created equal” were the main theme of the social contract written for the small colonies of what would be the basis of the United States of America to declare independence from Great Britain and its tyrannical king. However, “unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and “all men are created equal” did not apply to African Americans, enslaved or free for the coming years.

This leads to the Declaration of Independence which was adopted July 4, 1776. This document was meant as a self-esteem boost for the new Americans; giving them inalienable rights. “The most important statement in the declaration is the human rights, where the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are extolled” (Gaynor). “He [Thomas Jefferson] wrote: "... it was intended to be an expression of the American mind" (Early America). Jefferson meant that the American people wanted freedom from high taxes and the big government in England.

Did you ever wonder how the United States’ founders envisioned America to be in the years to come? America’s founding fathers were tasked with the difficult challenge of finding a balance between preserving individual rights and forming a strong, long-lasting union. There are many examples of how the founding fathers found a balance. Some examples of this are showcased in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and A New American Nation.

They aimed to create a government that would represent as an honest broker. According to the text, freedom of property would result in liberty for all people. This was not the case here. Most people during this stage in time were property owning males. That being woman or other person’s that didn’t own land. With property, liberty and democracy flourished. If you did not own land, you weren’t considered apart of society. Liberty and democracy are the principles of what the founding fathers had attempted to bring forward in the source of the idea of the United States. What they never had encountered was the problems that people faced in society, America is a utopian ideal. It seems to accept anyone on any terms, but that is where it is flawed. The founders wanting a balanced government was just close to the only decent forward to the

     The Declaration of Independence was the cornerstone of American freedom and equality. By writing this document, the American Colonies could now begin the process of starting a new way of life and a new government. Obviously, at the time the Declaration of Independence was written the concept of “equality” was more limited than it is today. Certainly, all members of colonial America did not share equal status. However the concepts of the Declaration of Independence have evolved more fully over the centuries

The Founding Fathers were not selfless and flawless human beings without any imperfections or personal bias. They were actually members of a political elite that were faced with a crumbling country that was suffering from a myriad of internal and external problems. The political environment after the Revolutionary War forced the new nation to either reform its ineffective government and address the critical issues of the time or else face complete destruction. Consequently, the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, which created a far stronger and resilient political structure that prevented the United States from disbanding. However, this document was not the ultimate form of democracy that brought freedom to the Western world. Instead,

They had been in love with the thought of liberty and believed foreseen rights for man would be good for man’s nature. Knowingly experiencing tyranny from the grand countries, the Fathers constructed the Constitution very carefully in order to avoid tyranny and a government for the people, by the people, and of the people would be developed. The First Amendment was created to ensure that the government would not and could not interfere with American citizens basic civil rights. Being that this Amendment was so important, many states refused to approve such documents as the Constitution until there were amendments that would protect people’s rights in the future. The Founding Fathers made the constitution to where eventually even in today’s days it would protect the rights of American citizens. There is always leeway with in the amendments to where not only does it protect the people of the past, but it protects the

Imagine 10 of your closest friends. Now mentally sort them into two categories: those that think and behave more like Puritans (John Winthrop, Judge Danforth from The Crucible), and those who think and behave more like Founding Fathers (Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin). What percentage of those 10 people are more like Puritans? Is it higher than that of the people that are more like Founding Fathers? Odds are, in our modern society (especially in liberal Southern California) you don’t have many stern, conservative, bible-thumping friends. You probably do, however, have friends that are firm believers in freedom, liberty, and rationality. These ideals were instilled in them and in our country by the values and actions of our Founding Fathers

One of the preeminent factors provoking the former Colonists to revolt from the British was concerned with liberty for all; this concept was expanded upon in Constitution, and subverted by the white men who wrote the Constitution. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independance in 1776, one of opening paragraphs decrees the Americans right to liberty: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”(Thomas Jefferson). Jefferson starts the document addressing the repressed liberty of the Americans in order to demonstrate the importance of fundamental rights. However, though Jefferson says “all men are created equal,” he does not specify a distinction of men, implying all Americans are equal. In the Constitution, the Preamble expresses the need for equality by declaring: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the

One of the most famous quote people remember from the Declaration of Independence was, “ We hold these truths to be self- evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Adams persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose the original draft of the document, which Congress then would edit to create the final version. The Declaration was an explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare

The whole sense that the Founders thought every human was equal was quite preposterous if thought about. Generally, most Americans are taught that the founders started this country because they wanted a place to be free. However, what these people aren’t being taught is that a lot of the labor that it took to build this country was the work of slaves. And what are slaves? They are workers who are kept at their place against their will.