An Introduction to the Mindset of the American Founding

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Up and down the coast of America a brand new era was stirring. There were ideals that were prevalent throughout the new territories that would soon come into the form of a stated government. The men at this time felt obliged to lay before mankind their admission of certain fundamental truths.

These men recognized as well as voiced that the principles at hand, in and of themselves, were not original. What was original was the way in which they were about to be applied to human nature and government.

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This is what would make them, the government and the time revolutionary. Jefferson tells us through a letter written to Henry Lee on May 8, 1825, that, "All American Whigs thought alike on these subjects." These subjects included issues such as: equality, state of nature, government by consent, the divine right of kings, absolute monarchy, tyranny, majority rule, representation, republicanism, liberty, law of nature, property, social compact, natural rights, civil rights, and religion.

Equality was an idea that was not unfamiliar to the men who founded this country.

They had been given equality by the king in England through what became known as the "Great Charter." This was the Magna Carta in which the King of England in 1215 proclaimed the rights and liberties of all Englishmen.

These rights were not seen as natural to all men but instead as a privilege that the gracious King allowed and recognized in Englishmen. This then became a charter that all succeeding Englishmen would look toward as a standard.

The standard would eventually cease to be fulfilled and would become something in which Englishmen hoped to someday return to. The men that were behind the American Revolution were such men. These Englishmen saw the term Revolution as more of a "Restoration" rather than something new. They also recognized that the right to equality was not granted to them by any King but rather by nature. This ideal rationally leads to the fact that a nature given right is given for all men by nature.

Certain ideals on the subject of equality that were held by the founders were pulled from revolutionary thinkers of that time. John Locke eloquently laid before mankind a rational account of the nature of equality. The founders would later lay the framework for America in obviously Lockian terms. Locke in his Second Treatise reasons that all men in a state of nature, whether that be historical or hypothetical, are in a state of equality,...Wherein all Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident, than that Creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without Subordination or Subjection... (71)

David Hume expanded on the idea that all men by nature are equal in his writings Of the Original Contract. Here he notes how "nearly equal all men are in their bodily force, and even in their mental powers and faculties, till cultivated by education (119)." Locke and Hume recognized that men, all men, are created equal. The founders realized that men are not endowed with the right of equal status by another of the same status, but rather by a creator which then equalizes all men everywhere at all times. This fact made the American mind a new political creation.

Rationally following the recognition of equality among all men of the human species was the fact that legitimate government could only arise from the consent of the equal beings. Prior to this time government was always seen as something in which some men were entitled by social status, or what they would call divine right, to rule over or govern others. By the acceptance of the above recognition of equality the justification of one man's natural right to rule over another fall.

James Otis states in The Rights of the British colonies Asserted and Proved, that no man has the right to govern another without consent of the governed because God is the only monarch in the universe, "who has a clear and indisputable right to absolute power; because he is the only ONE who is omniscient as well as omnipotent (142)." The Founders of America realized that men were equal in their inherently selfish nature as well. This meant that any absolute right to govern people would ultimately lead to an unjustly tyrannical government. This, therefore, could never be legitimate government. Similarly, John Tucker in An Election Sermon in 1771 states that,

All men are naturally in a state of freedom, and have an equal claim to liberty. No one, by nature, or by any special grant from the great Lord of all, has any authority over another. All right therefore in any to rule over others, must originate from those they rule over, and be granted by them (156).

This being the case, then all must unanimously give their consent to be ruled not by one, but by the majority. This is the only way to ensure legitimacy of rule by one over another. This then would lead the founders to attempt to form the first large democratic republic. This republic would consist of representatives because anything else would be chaotic anarchy.

James Madison explains the above statements about Just Democratic government in his Vices of the Political System of the United States as well as in the Federalist # 10. In the former of these two documents he points out the problems with representative government and in the latter the answer to such problems. First, Madison shows that in a representative government people, eventually, begin to act unjustly if there are no safeguards against such. Madison notes that, although there are representatives of the governed, these men are human beings. Men would have three motives for becoming a representative of the people.

These are

Ambition,
Personal Interest, and
Desire to ensure the public good.

Madison also notes that, unfortunately the first two seem to be most prevalent. This then leads to the possibility and likelihood that even legitimate government will become unjust and tyrannical catering to the passions of the majority at all time (252). Madison offers an institutional answer in Federalist # 10. Here he shows that by enlarging the sphere of the republic and by unionizing the individual states can ensure that no factions could form and ultimately prevail in a government. This then becomes the second requirement for founding just legitimate government. Equality, consent of each individual and representative government dependant on the people all became, like building blocks, the foundation of the American Revolution.

The idea of universal equality had been embedded in American's minds as seed. This seed naturally began to grow and expand by the mechanism of reason into such ideas about legitimate government and, consequently, liberties that the governed retained within that government. Locke points out in his Second Treatise that while humans are in a State of Nature they are governed by the Law of Nature. This Law teaches mankind, by means of reason (which is that Law), that "...no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty or Possessions (72)."

This means, as the founders recognized that man naturally and justly carries these liberties over into civil society. One gives up the power to enforce punishment on those who violate this Law, but retain the natural God given liberties that implore them to enter into civil society in the first place. The Foundation for legitimate government, then, is the consent of those who enter in order to preserve these fundamental liberties; this is also known as Social Compact. Thomas Jefferson in A Summary view of the Rights of British America in 1774 refers to the injustice done by the monarchial British government "...upon those rights which God and the laws have given equally and independently to all (159)." In Virginia's Declaration of Rights and Constitution in 1776 it is written,

That all men are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, which means the acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety (188).

These same principles are found, worded in one way or another, in all the state constitutions at the time of the American founding. Ultimately this idea about inherent, fundamental, liberties would find itself in the heart of the United States Declaration of Rights in 1776 because it reflected an expression of the American mind at that time.

Americans often discussed the inclusion of Religious Liberty in addition to these basic fundamental liberties of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The recognition of universal equality and the ideas of fundamental rights as axioms of the American mind at the time of the founding directly pointed toward the belief in a creator that entitled all men to these truths. With these revolutionary foundations for legitimate government came an overriding respect for the Supreme Being in which we are all dependent on.

Where that much is true, the founders also recognized the liberty of choice that must be retained among citizens of just government. In James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance in 1785 he tells that although men have a duty to their creator to worship and respect Him, no one, including government should coerce or force another to do so. He writes it in this way, "that Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force of violence." Prior to the American founding all other governments had set up some government form of required religion. Although the American mind was more inclined to recognize respect for a Creator that entitled them with rights in which to found legitimate free government, they recognized the danger of removing the liberty to do so. Jefferson in his Statute of Religious Liberty goes on to note that,

Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness... (231)

Jefferson goes on to note that God has not required man to worship Him but rather created him with the capacity of freewill which government then is inclined to uphold. Anything other than the choice regarding religion results in something less than what God intended it to be, and as Jefferson points out, hypocrisy and meanness surface. Americans looked at history and recognized the pattern of this reality. And where, they refer to the fact that they are "endowed to their Creator" numerous times in founding documents, they chose to preserve the individual Religious Liberty of every American.

Americans at the time of the founding would have almost unanimously conferred on the discussions of the preceding principles. The American mind at the time of the founding realized the revolutionary era in which they were participating. They were people that appreciated a government that attempted to ensure their rights as individuals. These American had fled from a government that refused to respect, honor and even admit to the freedom with nature had granted them and government was justly required to protect and preserve. These principles were the driving force behind many Americans as they sacrificed their lives to secure a land in which human beings could flourish as nature had intended them to, without unjust oppression.