(I cut the original quote too much – should have left the “aristocracy or oligarchy” to identify the referent of “either of those forms of government” :smack: )
Wow, did I miss the part of the original constitution that gave the right to vote to landowners alone?
Look, I’m not one of the unwashed masses who thinks that the Founding Fathers believed that every man, woman, child, and dog deserved the right to vote, just as we have now. I’ve taken the same entry level college history courses as the rest of you, and stopped the “Well, what you learned in high school just isn’t right, have you even read Hamilton” line of pompous discourse a long time ago. I’m sorry, this is just reminding me a bit of Good Will Hunting. Could we move beyond the “gotcha” attempts to some actual discussion?
It was enshrined in state law at the time, which was (and, in most respects, still is) all that mattered.
:dubious: No, you don’t get a pass that easily. You made an assertion regarding the Framers’ intentions which is flatly contradictory to historical facts, and without accurate understanding of those facts we can have no meaningful discussion of this thread’s topic.
If I may, I would prefer to first close the discussion of my prescription.
I firmly believe that my Rx for Peace through Liberty is indeed true in the scientific sense. Please forward it to your sources. I am curious how they would respond.
John Nash won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating what I intuitively understand. I can see no harm in trusting either the mathematics or the ethics on this one. It will take at least as much to convince me otherwise.
The game in discussion is Liberty. The Field is America and the World. Please join me on the side of Liberty.
Peace
rwjefferson
Which states had laws regarding voting for federal representatives such as senators that required land ownership? I honestly don’t remember that.
Yeah. It’s a pass alright. Why don’t you come back to me when you can discuss the topic at hand, instead of mindlessly spewing out the “clever” responses that you so ache to apply, even when they do not respond to the questions or comments made. You tried to pull the “You must be a hick, I have a entry level college background knowledge in the subject that I think allows me to play cute ‘urban legend debunking’ type games.” Only I don’t believe the urban legends, and I did not spout them in the first place.
Please, take your “training” and attempt to apply your “Everyone thing that people say must be the nail that my hammer is made for, even if it isn’t” line of debate elsewhere. Discuss what was written, without applying your formulaic answer to what wasn’t written.
In googling about for an answer to my own question, here is the best I can come up with so far:
“But the revolutionary struggle had significantly expanded the electorate. During the Revolution states with poll taxes and taxpayer franchises (such as North Carolina and New Hampshire) established nearly universal free male suffrage. When suffrage qualifications were tied to the value of an estate, wartime inflation eroded barriers. All states ended religious restrictions on voting. At war’s end, the eligible electorate numbered from 60 to 90 percent of free males, with most states edging close to the high end of that range.”
Unfortunately, I know little about the source: Cite
The source is the Reader’s Companion to American History which is coedited by one of my favorite historians, Eric Foner. The article in question seems to have been written by Marc Wayne Kruman, Chair of Wayne State University’s history department and author of a couple books on early politics. Despite his access to a world of sources I can only dream of I would say his estimate that “60 to 90 percent of free males” had the franchise at the end of the war ( 1783 ) is overly optimistic. Alfred F Young put the percentage of enfranchised adult white males in New York in 1784 as 60%. Charles S Sydnor reports after a systematic review of virginian electoral history of the 1780s that, “However it is safe to say that between 35,000 and 40,000 men - between a third and a half of the adult white male population - were qualified to vote at this time.” Professor Kruman’s estimate seems a decade or so premature. I’d guess it would fit the electorate that elected the men who elected Jefferson in 1800.
The racial aspect is easily missed here. The first state to achieve full white adult male suffrage was South Carolina. Whiteness was useful in bringing cohesion to disparate European immigrant groups as well as justifying slavery. Even in the North electoral laws were changed to exclude free blacks and Native-Americans. Whiteness, rather than property, came to be the token of full citizenship. Or as Gregory Knouff put it, “Clearly, the most important change in national identity in the United States from the end of the Revolution to the 1830s was the profound shift from a gendered economic basis for citizenship to a gendered biological one.”
But there were no elections for Senators then, Senators were selected by the State Legislatures.
That’s great. Who elected the state legislatures? Who elected the federal house?
So let’s see: The FF were against monarchy and tyranny. But at the same time they belived that if government was turned over to the great unwashed masses, it would degenerate into anarchy and dictatorship. So apparently they believed that democracy should consist of the rule of an educated elite who would wisely guide the nation out of enlightened self-interest.
In other words, the Founding Fathers were Illuminati?!?
I think they gave us the necesasary tools to improve our government, which would make it un-necessary to “overthrow” it.
Maybe you aren’t the “American” you would like us all to believe you are.
We really only have 3 major problems in this country.
1.) Freedom of the press.
2.) Freedom of speach.
3.) Freedom to protest.
These are the problems, which have caused us to be in our present state of confussion. (Look that word up in your dictionary, and it fits our nation to a tee.)
These freedoms need not be abolished. Only modified. Do so, and we will always be the best country in the world.
You still have the right to leave American. No one has taken that right away.
Someone said “Love it or leave it.”
What other country would allow us to complain about our government?
Canada?
First, what makes you think these are America’s only major problems? That would give us fewer and easier major problems than any society in history.
Second, what makes them “problems” at all, and how have they caused us any confussion?
I was referrng to countries that I would like to live in. Not just visit.
you tell me what you think is America’s greatest problem.
not sure what made you drag this thread back up…but…do you really consider that the US has only THREE problems? Or do you mean the Bill of Rights and the FF had only three problems?
Jefferson didn’t, at least directly. But George Washington did (although admittedly not against British citizens). When the British were seeking an alliance with Iroquois in 1779 and it looked like the Iroquois might agree to attack the Colonials, Washington ordered a major expedition into Iroquois land and had dozens of villages burned and hundreds of Iroquois killed to demonstrate to them the danger of siding with the British. His orders to the leaders of the expedition regarding Iroquois villages were that they were to “not merely be overrun but destroyed”.
And Doctor Doom. Don’t forget him.
Fuel supply.
Um… no.
“The Founding Fathers” almost universally refers to the men who sculpted the Declaration of Independence. Since Jefferson wrote the damn thing, you might consider him the ne plus ultra of Founding Fathers. He certainly provided the overwhelming majority of the philosophical backbone of the group.
Those who sculpted the Constitution are usually referred to as “The Framers.” This group, obviously, has significant overlap with the Founding Fathers.