American Founding

A detailed Summary of American Founding

The Mindset of the American Founding

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. 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, divine right of kings, absolute monarchy, tyranny, majority rule, representation, republicanism, liberty, law of nature, property, social compact, natural rights, civil rig!

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.” T

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 thes!

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)

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 falls. 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 peop!

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.

ct that a nature given right is given for all men by nature.

That all men are by nature free and i

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Approximate Word count = 1929
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History