Were the Founding Fathers Democratic Reformers? Essay

The reasoning behind the Constitution of the United States is presented as 'based upon the philosophy of Hobbes and the religion of Calvin. It assumes the natural state of mankind in a state of war, and that the carnal mind is at enmity with God.' Throughout, the struggle between democracy and tyranny is discussed as the Founding Fathers who envisioned the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787 believed not in total democracy, but instead saw common man as selfish and contemptuous, and therefore in need of a 'a good political constitution to control him.' Being a largely propertied body, with the exception of William Few, who was the

76) With this in mind the framers carefully and purposefully crafted a Constitution that divided federal powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. This division of power gave each branch the ability and authority to control the others through a specific system of checks and balances. One check on Congress was the design of a bicameral system where Congress was divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate. Members of the House of Representatives would be elected by majority popular vote making them the direct representative of their constituencies. Members of the Senate would be elected by state legislatures making them direct representatives of the states, and proponents of the state’s rights and sovereignty. Joseph Story (1833) suggests that one main reason for the mode of appointing the Senate was to introduce a powerful check upon rash legislation, and prevent the national governments encroachment on the powers of the states (p.183). However, in passing the 17th Amendment the mode of electing the Senate as a means of partitioning federal and state power collapsed leaving the states unprotected from abuses of the central government.

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.

Howard Zinn is a professor of political science in Boston University and Gordon S. Wood is a history professor at Brown University. These two historians viewed the nature of American Revolution from two opposite different perspectives. Zinn viewed the American Revolution as an effort to preserve America’s status; while Wood looked at Revolution as an event that incorporated sense of equality among all Americans. Zinn was able to present the argument better as evidences he provided to support his argument seemed to make more sense and were closer to reality.

With comparison between a small and large government, James Madison argues that a larger government, like the one proposed by the new United States Constitution, would protect from the tyranny of the majority that would likely be the result of maintaining a small government. He argues that voters are more likely to elect “fit” representatives, as compared to the higher corruption plausibility present in a smaller government. Madison formulates an important argument in favor of the government presented by the Constitution.

2. By assigning both, The People’s History of the United States, and A Patriot’s History of the United States, it allows us to take a look at two different views of American history. Howard Zinn, the author of The People’s History of the United States, seems to tell the story from the view of those not in power, like those in slavery, women, and Native Americans. Conversely, the authors of A Patriot’s History of the United States, Larry Schweikart and

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

This book emphasizes the alternative interpretations offered by Americans on the origins of the Constitution. Holton’s purpose with this book was to show that the framers interests involved making America more attractive to investors. In order to do so, they purposefully made the government less democratic with the writing of the Constitution. However, with the addition of the Bill of Rights, one could argue the Framers had at least a slight concern for the American people and their civil liberties.

Howard Zinn’s, Peoples’ History of the US and Larry Schweikart’s, Patriots’ History of the US are two analytical views on history that most people would consider politically conflicting. Zinn’s Marxist book was widely praised by liberal activist and Schweikart’s book is greatly publicized by conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. These two widely known historians turned their focus on writing two historical pieces that would fill in the “historical holes” that weren’t being taught in the educational systems. It created a type of diverse learning that made for a great argument while still allowing the readers to understand all sides of the topics at hand. Zinn really dismissed the common “white mans history” and focused his approach on a multiple minority perspective. Schweikart’s book is very different in the sense he takes aim at Zinn as he targets words like “great discovery” and “war on terror” which Zinn only used as scare quotes. Schweikart’s book really reads like old history textbooks from the moral principals of the American founders that built this nation to the ideological view of American prosperity. No matter who shares the views of the political perspectives or condemns them because of its bias stances both historians felt responsible in writing the history of the United States.

I think that Zinn's arguments were backed up very well with information or logistic examples. I think that the founding fathers were democratic reformers to a certain extent but in the Constitution, minorities such as slaves, indentured servants, women and men without property were not really mentioned which kind of shows that the Constitution was aimed for more of the elite class, usually all who had plenty of wealth and heald a good social status. I feel like

Between 1607 and 1733, Great Britain established thirteen colonies in the New World along the land’s eastern coast. England’s colonies included Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Though the colonies were classified as New England, middle or southern colonies, the colonists developed a unifying culture. With this new American culture, the colonists throughout the colonies began to think differently than their English cousins. Because colonial America displayed characteristics of a democratic society and, therefore, deviated from England’s monarchic ways, it was established as a democratic society.

One of Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s first disagreements began with the idea of a National Bank. Hamilton suggested that the government should create the Bank of the United States Jefferson protested because this was not allowed by the Constitution. Hamilton opposed the view of Jefferson and stated that the Constitution’s writers could not have predicted the need of a bank for the United States. Hamilton said that the right to create the Bank of the United States was stated in the “elastic” or the “necessary and proper” clause in which the Constitution gave the government the power to pass laws that were necessary for the welfare of the nation. “This dilemma revisits the ever lasting dispute between the “strict constructionists” (Jefferson) who believed in the strict interpretation of the Constitution by not going an inch beyond its clearly expressed provisions, and the “loose constructionists” (Hamilton) who wished to reason out all sorts of implications from what it said”. Just a few years later, under President Jefferson, the federal government of the United States

The question posed by both Madison and the Framers in the 85 “Federalist Papers” and Dahl in his book How Democratic is the American Constitution? is how effective the Constitution is at promoting the ideals of a democracy. For Dahl, there are several issues surrounding the Constitution, from its drafting, to its ideology, to its relevance. By analyzing Dahl’s critiques of the Constitution in terms of the parallels that exist between factions and the two-party system, the issue of unequal representation, and the necessity for the Framers to compromise on their ideals to ratify the Constitution, Dahl defined a clear argument based in his general disapproval for the Constitution. However, by combining Dahl’s critiques with potential rebuttals from the opinions and perspectives of Madison and his fellow Federalists, it is evident that both Dahl and the Framers believed that if the constitution was completely successful, then the lives of the American people would be enhanced. While Dahl believed that the Constitution, ultimately, has not fully protected the rights of all persons, he, like the Framers, focused on the particulars of government that must be improved such that the American life is bettered.

Selecting the right person for power was tedious work, they asked themselves “how would wise men be detected or selected? Would wise men be forbidden to serve in the house? Could a man sit in the house of the wise for one year and sit in the representative assembly the next?” Contemplating on the distribution of equal power among the different branches had one common thing, they wanted it to be composed of “wise men” meaning “the best and the brightest of the nation”. It was stated that, “letting legislature select was to give it too much power”, what worried some people was that the central power would come to overrule and the country would turn into tyranny. They came to a conclusion of two men per state and because there was some concern that the senate and representatives may have had too much power, they also included the chief executive to allow a veto in legislation.