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Brittany Brumley
Traeger
U.S. History
November 1, 2013
The Founding Fathers
The Constitution and the codification of the law presented at the time were a great leap
forward in the way citizens were able to interact with their government; an attempt to state the
fundamental ideals of government and to attach the laws and statutes of the nation to those
principles. Those principles enshrined in the Constitution and its amendments represent solid
bedrock of central principle that all subsequent law can be challenged. Many other nations,
including many democratic nations, do not have that bedrock, or have a central principle that is
arbitrarily defined, such as the 'divine right of kings.' The Founding Father's attempts to give
their nascent nation’s legislative core were not perfect, but they were better than anything else
that had come before it and two centuries of successful democracy has proven its worth and
effectiveness. The Founding Fathers of the United States would be proud of the country as it is
today; not because they specifically foresaw each twist and turn of history, or even because they
would approve of each direction the nation has chosen to take throughout history, but because
their actions at the time of the nation's birth showed that they were intending to create a
legislative and governmental framework that would be flexible enough to stand through the test
of time and of change, and that test is one that the United States has passed with flying colors.
Part of the success of the Founding Fathers can be attributed to the slow pace with which
they proceeded. After throwing off English rule in the War of Independence, the American rebels
were governed by a document called the Articles of Confederation, but it was a rather haphazard
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affair, with little unification of the various state governments. It was obvious that something
more central was required, but the opinion-makers of the United States took well over a decade
to decide on and codify the principles by which the new nation would be governed. The United
States, far from united at the time in anything other than opposition to English rule (and even that
had only unified them at a late stage of the war – Americans were by no means one hundred
percent behind the rebellion), thus had its guiding legislation examined and publicly tested by a
number of educated men across a relatively long period of time. Much of this examination was
done in a series of papers called the Federalist Papers, written and published by a number of
prominent Americans. The purpose of these documents was to convince delegates of the
Constitutional Convention to adopt the Constitution. The Papers were basically a series of essays
on topics related to the newly-drafted Constitution, which were published in newspapers, most
often in New York—which was seen as a key state for accepting the Constitution. James
Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote most of these eighty-five essays. John Jay, USA's first
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, also contributed several of these essays. The collected set of
essays is an important commentary on this government, which is surprising considering they
were penned with rather unseemly haste; Madison at times completed four essays in a week.
One issue covered in the Federalist Papers was the relative power of a central government
and that of the state governments beneath it. The writers had recent experience of both; before
the war, they had been under the highly centralized government of England; in the intervening
years, they had been governed by the very loose Articles of Confederation which left much up to
the individual states. The Federalist Papers detailed a combination of local power and national
power, guided by the differing ideas of Hamilton, who often argued the national point of view,
and Madison, who argued the more local point of view. The system they set up provided for
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different levels of representation within a national government, and specifically provided
differing ways to appoint those levels in order to provide 'checks and balances', a phrase now
embedded in the language of the American government. The House of Representatives was
intended to represent the people and was elected by popular vote. The Senate, however, was to
be elected by the State legislatures. The Senate was intended to be a more conservative voice to
offset the more radical possibilities thrown up by popular vote in the House of Representatives.
The method of voting for the Senate was amended to popular vote only in 1913. The Senate does
not, on voting record, appear more conservative than the House of Representatives, and certainly
does not function as an inherently conservative house of review like England's House of Lords.
Due to this, it is possible that Hamilton and Madison might feel that their ideas did not fully take
root in America; however, their perception of the necessity for having a conservative house to
quell the impetuosity of a popularly-elected house was predicated on views prevalent at the time
of society as a small number of well-educated and wealthy men and a larger number of 'great
unwashed'. Hamilton and Madison might well be surprised by the level of education attained by
a great majority of Americans today, occasional obvious exceptions notwithstanding.
One issue the Founding Fathers also dealt with was the leader of the nation. The rather
chaotic years since the War of Independence had demonstrated the need for a central figure of
power, but without the absolute authority of a figure like King George III of England, whose
ignorance towards American interests led to the revolt in the first place. The United States,
compared to most other democratic nations, was born fairly recently. This allowed its creators to
attempt to establish its legislative framework from logical principles based on fairness and
justice, and to attempt to avoid mistakes they perceived had been made in the legislative
framework of other nations before them. One result of this was that they decided against
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establishing a monarchy. Monarchies were almost ubiquitous throughout the nations of the
Western world at the time, and when the Constitutional Convention first sat down to work on
what would be the central principles of the new nation, the French Revolution – the first major
overthrow of the monarchy in Europe – had not yet occurred. In fact, the reverse was true: the
proposed American system, with no central inviolate ruler, had a direct influence on the
instigators of the French revolution.
The advantages of a monarchy government mainly included its succession. As long as
you had someone who was viewed to be the only person with the right to rule, and as long as
succession passed from that person to their heirs in a predictable and immutable way, it was
much harder for a nation to descend into the chaos of civil war because the leadership was never
in dispute (though even having a clear and unchanging line of succession has had, as can be seen
in even a cursory examination of history, only a limited effectiveness in keeping the ultimate
leadership of a nation from being contested). Having a monarch, however, especially one who
was supposedly placed in that position by “divine right,” undermined any concept of equality
within a state; if someone is appointed monarch and there is no procedure in the legislative
framework for taking that role away from them, they are clearly possessed of different rights to
the rest of the populace. The United States avoided having a monarch largely because the
problems of a monarchy – the monarch might not be a very good candidate for a leader – had
been exposed to them dramatically in the war they had just fought for independence. King
George III of England had failed to understand and act on the grievances of his citizens in the
American colonies and his actions brought home to them the fundamentally distant nature of an
appointed monarch, not just geographically but in desires and drives as well. It is in the nature of
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a king to further his own legacy rather than that of the nation he represents; monarchy is an
inherent recipe for conservatism.
The possibility of an American king was proposed by various people at various times
between the end of the War of Independence in 1776 and the establishment of the Constitution in
1787, including a proposal sent to George Washington himself by Colonel Lewis Nicola of his
staff, saying, "Some people have so connected the ideas of tyranny and monarchy as to find it
very difficult to separate them, it may therefore be requisite to give the head of such a
constitution as I propose, some title apparently more moderate, but if all other things were once
adjusted I believe strong argument might be produced for admitting the title of king, which I
conceive would be attended with some material advantages" (Furr). This has sometimes been
interpreted as an offer for Washington himself to be made king, but there is no evidence
suggesting any such offer was ever brought to Washington's attention, and given his reluctance
to even take up the short-term role of President, it seems unlikely he would have considered the
proposal with any favor. Certainly by the time of the Convention, Nicola's grumble about people
arbitrarily connecting tyranny and monarchy seems to have been become reasonably established,
and the Founding Fathers decided to establish a representative democracy headed by an elected
President rather than appoint a King of their own.
This is one area where it is likely that the Founding Fathers would have been more than
happy with the fruits of their decision, had they been granted the opportunity to see history from
our position. The leadership role of the United States has proven to be a strong one over the last
two centuries, and yet has never become autocratic in the way that monarchies have often
succumbed. The combination of the role having strong powers yet being of limited duration
provides a balance in the position that is sometimes lacking in monarchies. Monarchies are more
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heavily dependent on the quality of the person filling the role that a presidential republic is. This
is most often because the ability of any single person to fill the role is limited to four-eight years.
It is interesting that the power of the reputation of George Washington established the eight year
limit as a tradition; the constitutional amendment legally limiting any President to two terms of
office only came in after Franklin D. Roosevelt who was elected for four consecutive terms
(winning in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944), the last two in a time of world war. Whether a
President is considered to be good or bad, there have been no cases of an American President
effectively overthrowing the democracy in America’s government system.
Another factor that the Founding Fathers considered important at the time they created
the legislative framework of the USA was the concept of separation of powers. The United States
deliberately separated three arms of governmental power: the judicial, constituting the judges
and law courts; the legislative, the Senate and House of Representatives who create and amend
the laws; and the executive, embodied by the President, who makes day-to-day leadership
decisions affecting the nation. In many other nations, these powers are not entirely separated.
Some parliaments have the right to over-ride and set aside legal decisions. In the parliamentary
democracies of England and its ex-colonies, executive power is held by a Prime Minister who is
the head of the largest political party in the lower house of parliament, and thus is a member of
the legislative arm of power as well. The American system provides something that was very
important to the Founding Fathers as they worked their way toward a codified description of the
democracy they wanted – a system of checks and balances. The separation of powers acts as a
brake on runaway government. It requires the President to work along with a House of
Representatives and a Senate to get legislation enacted, and these bodies may have a majority of
their elected representatives being from a party different than that of the President. This forces a
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certain amount of compromise and deal-making on the floor of the two houses and tends to
prevent ideologically-driven half-baked ideas from being implemented without due
consideration. In addition the separation of the judicial arm of government from the executive
and legislative branches has held the lawmaking and enforcing actions of those two arms
strongly within the framework of the Constitution itself. The courts, all the way up to the
Supreme Court, are able to invalidate any law that does not comply with the Constitution itself,
and the fact that the courts do this independently of the executive and legislative branches means
that there is a brake on the ability of a government to rush through legislation that contravenes
the central principles the American republic was founded on. Although this system has not
proven one hundred percent effective in weeding out bad law, it is more effective than not
having such a system; the USA's independent judiciary tends to keep it on a balanced path better
than other democracies. The Founding Fathers, if looking back from today, might well have
approved of how their experiment in the ideas and desire to implement the separation of powers
had worked.
A contentious part of the Founding Fathers' ideas has been the separation of Church and
State. Many Western democracies had a state religion, and often had a role in government set
aside for the leaders of that particular church, or even requirements that certain government
office-holders be required to be members of a particular church or religion. The Founding
Fathers deliberately decided to keep religion away from any role in government. The Religion
Clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, state that
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof". This has been interpreted by the Supreme Court and other lesser courts as
keeping government out of the practice of religion. Thus, institutions that are government
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institutions are generally not permitted to indulge in any religious practice that can be seen to be
endorsed by that institution.
There has been considerable contention over the interpretation of this clause. The United
States is an extremely religious country; far more so than the social democracies of Europe, yet it
has in practice the most restrictive limits on religion being endorsed by government. Many of the
more extremist religious people in the United States feel that the Religion Clauses (the
Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause) were not intended by the Founding Fathers
to remove religion from the practice of government. Because the interpretation of the clause by
numerous court decisions throughout the years since the Bill of Rights was passed in 1791, it has
has resulted in the prevention of the religious doctrines from being enshrined in law. Statesanctioned prayers in schools, displays of religious icons in schools and courthouses that display
the Ten Commandments have all fallen foul of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the
Establishment Clause. The arguments of the religious people is that the Founding Fathers were
all Christian and would have endorsed Christianity taking a more centralistic role in the United
States; whereas that of the current interpretations of the Religion Clauses by the Supreme Courts
often prevent that from occurring.
Despite a general lack of success, the religious extremists keep trying to get religious
material embedded in the law, generally at low levels of government responsibility. The most
common battlefield in recent years has been the School Boards where religious extremists have
attempted to insert creationist material into science curriculum. The most prominent of these
battles was in 2005 during the Supreme Court case of Kitzmiller vs. Dover. During this case, the
religious tried to add the 'Intelligent Design' concept to the science curriculum; however the
court case demonstrated fairly comprehensively that ‘Intelligent Design’ was simply creationism
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in a different guise and as creationism was a religious concept; it should not be endorsed by the
State. The court ruled that Intelligent Design could not be taught in schools, and the judicial
decision included the words: "The Establishment Clause forbids not just 'teaching' religion, but
any governmental action that endorses or has the primary purpose or effect of advancing
religion" (Jones).
The courts have historically been historically inconsistent on these issues and these
inconsistencies tend to encourage the religious people. One notable exception to the concept of
keeping religion out of material endorsed by the government has been the introduction in 1954 of
the words "under God" after "one nation" to the Pledge of Allegiance, which would seem to be a
clear violation of the Establishment Clause as it has been interpreted in other decisions of the
Supreme Court. This change can very clearly be read as an endorsement of certain religions
ahead of others.
So what was the opinion of the Founding Fathers on including religion in their new
republic? The most telling indicator is the phrasing of Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury
Baptists, which was published in a newspaper at the time, "Believing with you that religion is a
matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith
or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I
contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that
their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State" (Library of
Congress). This statement clearly establishes that the Religion Clauses meant exactly what was
said; the phrase has been repeated time and time again in support of the Supreme Court decisions
precluding endorsement of religion by the government. If the Founding Fathers were looking at
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what the Religion Clauses wrought today, they would consider that their ideas had been
achieved: a nation where every man is free to practice his own religion, but where the
government of that nation does not endorse or support any particular religion.
It is also worth noting that while the Founding Fathers had a varied range of religions
(including some who had apparently had a vague belief in Deism rather than being a member of
a particular church); all their religions and beliefs fell within the general category, 'Christian', so
the religious arguers are correct in identifying them as such. This also means that the actions they
took were in full knowledge of the fact that they were denying Christianity a central role in their
new nation, despite the fact that they themselves were members of that religion. The only
conceivable explanation for this was that they definitively sought to exclude religion from the
actions of the State, again supporting the idea that they would approve of the direction the United
States had taken in the two centuries since they wrote the Religion Clauses.
There are many other individual pieces of legislation in the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights that could be picked out separately and examined as to whether the Founding Fathers
would approve of how they had been interpreted since they were written, but it can be assumed
that the Founding Fathers were intelligent enough to realize that it is impossible to get every
detail of governing a nation correct the first time. Their main concern, if they could see what the
nation they founded had achieved, would have been to simply see whether the framework they
put in place had been flexible enough, and had sufficient checks and balances to survive the
vicissitudes of political intrigue and external threat across the centuries. In light of the political,
economic and social success of the United States, it is likely that they would consider that they
had their ideas carried out well and had given Americans a strong and efficient, democratic
government.
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Works Cited
Furr, Grover. "Col. Nicola's Letter to Washington, May 22, 1782." Col. Nicola's Letter to
Washington, May 22, 1782. Montclair State University, Mar. 2007. Web. 18 Oct. 2013.
"Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists The Final Letter, as Sent." Jefferson's Letter to the
Danbury Baptists (June 1998). Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2013.
“Tammy Kitzmiller, Plaintiffs v. Dover Area School District.” National Center of Science
Education. Stage 2, 20 Dec. 2005. Web. 11 Oct. 2013.