Were the Founding Fathers Liberal or Conservative…….Part II

Continuing on with some facts about the gentlemen that we know as the Founding Fathers…..or the liberals may refer to as the “non-child-bearing parents” You think I’m kidding?? So here we go………

Alexander Hamilton:

• Along with Madison and John Jay, authored the Federalist Papers, rallying support for the new Constitution. Led the effort to convene the Constitutional Convention when the nation was verging on anarchy.
• Hamilton  invited representatives from the thirteen states to assemble in Philadelphia with the express purpose of “revising” the Articles of Confederation. Behind closed doors and with no real authority, the delegates decided to write an entirely new constitution. Imagine that…..today NO ONE can agree on ANYTHING and NOTHING gets done!
• Fresh out of Columbia University, he organized artillery regiments in New York for the Revolutionary War, and from 1779 to 1781 he was Washington’s chief aide. When Washington assumed the presidency, he named Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury.
• Interestingly, before Washington was elected President Hamilton was part of a group that thought the new nation should have a King and they approached Prince Henry of Prussia!!
• Hamilton was the one who most advocated an elitist political vision. He believed that the intellectual aristocracy should rule the nation.
• Hamilton’s political legacy is embodied in the Federal Bank. He led the effort to establish the first such bank, which he saw as critical for sustaining the government’s fragile finances. His opponents saw the bank as an evil tool for expanding the power of the federal government, at the expense of the states. 
• Hamilton is regarded as the “Father of the National Debt” because he felt that a national debt was really a “blessing.” The more money the government owed to the people of the country, the more the people had a stake in the success of the country! Most of today’s politicians would have LOVED him!!
• When Jefferson ran for president in 1800, he and Aaron Burr (both Republicans) tied. The election went to the Federalist-controlled House. Hamilton, founder of the Federalist party, convinced his colleagues to elect Jefferson over Burr. Burr then campaigned for governor of New York. Again, Hamilton swayed voters against Burr. Finally, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel. Fatally wounded by his rival, Hamilton died one day late…..Maybe we should bring back “duels” and REALLY drain the swamp!

George Mason:

• Member, Virginia Constitutional Convention (1776) Delegate, Constitutional Convention (1787)…..but interestingly he REFUSED to sign the Constitution!
•  He was one of the most fundamental thinkers of the American Revolution and formed a close philosophical alliance with Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, James Madison, and George Washington.
• Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was influenced greatly by Mason’s work on the Virginia bill of rights, and Mason’s ideas also had an impact on the development of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. He eventually opposed the Constitution because of the compromise concerning slavery known as the 3/5 Compromise and the failure of the delegates to include a Bill of Rights. The 3/5 Compromise determined that three out of every five : was counted when determining a state’s total population for legislative representation and taxation.
• He said:  “It is easy to foresee that there will be much difficulty in organizing a government upon this great scale, and at the same time reserving to the state legislatures a sufficient portion of power for promoting and securing the prosperity and happiness of their respective citizens.”…………….that means STATE’S rights! Much of what we are seeing today is liberals pushing there agenda on EVERYBODY!

Gouverneur Morris:

• First of all I never realized that WAS his first name……I always thought he was just a Governor of some state! LOL
• He wrote the Preamble to the United States Constitution and has been called the “Penman of the Constitution”
•  He was a strong supporter of the federal constitution although he was not a strong supporter of the “power” of the people (he initially opposed the American Revolution because he felt it was controlled by the “mob”). ………Guess he wouldn’t have liked the BLM movements burning up the cities!
• He was in favor of senators being chosen for life, significant property qualifications to vote, direct election of the president by the elite qualified voters, and representation in Congress based on taxation………….I bet he would have been all for voter registration!!
•  He was made the chairman of the Committee of Style and was responsible for the “wording” of the Constitution. He took twenty-three proposed resolutions and condensed them into the seven major articles contained in the Constitution. 
• As for his feelings about the “average” voter:  “The mob begin to think and reason.  Poor reptiles!  They bask in the sun, and ere noon they will bite, depend on it.  The gentry begin to fear this.”

Roger Sherman:

• Helped draft the Declaration of Independence;  Helped draft the Articles of Confederation, was both a member of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
• Sherman was a self-made man, married twice and fathered fifteen children! When did he have time to write the Constitution???
•  He was in favor of the President being appointed by the Legislature for a three year term of office.  However, his most important accomplishment was the compromise on representation in Congress he suggested that broke the “deadlock” between large and small states.  This compromise was called the “Great Compromise”, and it showed the delegates that they could and should compromise in order to accomplish the writing of a new constitution.
• He was, however, opposed to a separate “bill of rights” to be added to the Constitution. By the time Sherman served in the United States Congress he was an advocate of the Federalist philosophy.  He ended up supporting Alexander Hamilton’s financial program of assumption of state debts, the establishment of a national bank, and enactment of a tariff to help the young nation to stabilize its economy.
• He said: “The question is, not what rights naturally belong to man, but how they may be most equally and effectually guarded in society.”

James Wilson:

• James Wilson was an early supporter of the American Revolution 
• Highest Political Office: Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
• He emerged as a political leader after the American Revolutionary War, and as a member of the Congress of the Confederation (1783; 1785-1786) under the Articles of Confederation was strongly in favor of an amendment to permit the government the power to tax.  
• He was a strong supporter of a republican form of government in which the people choose the representatives in government, and was in favor of the “power” of the people during a time period when many of the political visionaries did not believe in democracy.
• Wilson felt that people and their individual rights took priority over those of property rights, and was opposed to slavery.  He also believed in the concept of “federalism” in which there was a division of power between the states and national government. 
• He said: “The government ought to possess not only first the force but secondly the mind or sense of the people at large.  The legislature ought to be the most exact transcript of the whole society.”

Edmund Randolph:

• Highest Political Office: U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Secretary of State
• He practiced law until the American Revolutionary War disrupted his personal and professional life.  At the outbreak of the war in 1775, his father, mother, and sisters moved back to England.  Randolph supported the rebellion and served for a short time as an aid to General George Washington.
• He is best known for presenting a proposal supporting the large states known as the Virginia Plan.  The plan called for a bicameral legislative body and each state represented by population with the first house (representatives) elected by the people and the second house (senators) elected by the first house.  The Virginia Plan eventually became part of the Great Compromise or Connecticut Compromise submitted by Roger Sherman.
• Randolph referred to the Constitution as “the anchor of our political salvation”.
• He said:  “There are great reasons when persons with limited powers are justified in exceeding them, and a person would be contemptible not to risk it.”

So there you have it……..11 of the most diverse people EVER who managed to craft the Constitution of the United States.  They found the histories of Great Britain and the ancient Greek and Roman republics particularly useful. But they also scrutinized the experiences of other nations, and of the previous 150 years of American colonial history. Ultimately they found a balance that could NEVER be achieved today by the swamp that exists in DC. The important concepts that make the Constitution successful are:

• They granted the central government enough power to keep peace among states, to provide for common defense and foreign policy, and to address some other common concerns.
• They limited the central power to itemized functions, leaving the remainder with states, localities, families, and individuals.
• They added other restrictions to forestall bad governmental practices and to prevent federal and state politicians from oppressing individual rights.
• They outlined key federal institutions, such as Congress, the president, and the courts, and erected checks and balances among them.

So what would the Founding Fathers think of America today? Well they would find that during the 1930s and 1940s some of its key safeguards—particularly the limits on federal power—began to erode. Politicians and courts increasingly disregarded those safeguards. Most have not been restored, and the damage has become permanent. Other than one four-year stretch (the Civil War), the states remained at peace with each other.  Where would they find the erosion of the Constitution?

• Many federal programs have been adopted in excess of the original Constitution’s limits on federal authority.
• Some programs, particularly the “Great Society” initiatives of the 1960s, contributed to the decline of the American family.
• Excessive federal regulation and spending have slowed economic growth and saddled us with a huge public debt.
• There are always politicians on the right and the left that would like to eliminate or change the Constitution …….for example…..changing the number of Supreme Court Judges to sway decisions.

There you have it. The evolution of the Constitution……and the story of the men that wrote it. The Constitutional Convention ran from May 25 to September 17, 1787. After New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify, on June 22, 1788, the Confederation Congress established March 9, 1789 as the date to begin operating under the Constitution. An amazing miracle!

Thanks for reading! and remember……Enjoy yourself…..It’s later than you think!