The Motivations Of The Founding Fathers When Creating American Constitution

We take it for granted that the United States is the most powerful country today, and perhaps in human history and likely to remain there for decades. The Founding Fathers were responsible for the creation of a system that they though would decide forever the fate of Republican Government that would last for decades and it did so. These enlightened statesmen really started something in history, they fought the battles to cause it to take place, battles on the battlefields and in the halls of government. Without their contribution, the thirteen colonies would have never been united and our country would still be under Britain’s rule, but most important, the Constitution would’ve never been adopted.

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law document established two hundred years ago, this official document was enacted to improve the government, protect the people, establish justice and make relations within the country peacefully in order to make living conditions good and fair to achieve all the benefits of freedom. It wasn’t until the Progressive era that historians such as Charles A. Beard started to question their motivations, they stated that they supported the creation of a stronger central government not for patriotic reasons but instead for the protection of their economic interests. And that’s what I am going to be talking about throughout this essay, were the Founding Fathers real Democratic Reformers or they reformed the government for their own benefit?

John P. Roche argues that the work and motivations of the Founding Fathers are undisputable. They weren’t just wealthy men playing their cards right even though they did, but they were the first revolutionary-democratic politicians seeking for a nationalist reform and popular approbation in a political cosmos full of adversities. Constitutionalists used political legitimacy to fight against the erratic behavior of the Confederation through the mobilization of public opinion but this wasn’t an easy process because of the variety of ideals of the different groups from the opposition, which all had different definitions of freedom and authority. However, many dominant figures from Confederate states such as Georgia and Virginia cooperated in the call for a Convention that developed a new concept in politics, a Continental ideology that demanded a revision of the domestic institutions and the general government. In fact, the Constitutionalists leaders took a big role in the discussion for defending the American Nationalism that emerged from the American Revolution. George Washington whose prestige was enormous, and the intellectuals of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the essential political leaders that carried on the revolution using their leadership and communication skills to pursue the political reform. Actually, if it wasn’t for these leaders who tried to create a legislation that would be acceptable for all of the Confederate States and peoples, the United States might have disintegrated into 13 different countries.

For that reason, the Founding Fathers gathered to reshape the structure of state and develop a new set of constitution articles allowing and regulating all political and social issues. They managed to achieve nationhood. These people managed to understand that sometimes it is necessary to take control over the situation in the country and implement changes even if citizens do not see the necessity of such radical measures.

On the other hand, Howard Zinn argued that the Founding Fathers were only interested in protecting their property rights. In his essay, Zinn aims to write an account of American history from the perspective of persecuted, powerless, marginalized people, rather than the pantheon of heroes and elites. He presents this idea starting off in the conquest of the new World and the whole series of injustices and wars because of the slavery issue that characterized the country since the English settlers came to North America. Elites instituted policies designed to drive poor whites, Native Americans, and black slaves apart.

He admits that the Founding Fathers were the responsible for a great revolution against Britain but he denies their radicality, instead he pictures them as powerful men who saw an opportunity to become even more powerful by manipulating the working classes against an external enemy using war to immobilize movements and distract the American public of the failing economy.

Zinn also indicates that the Constitution enacted by the Founding Fathers was not written merely to benefit slaves, servants, women and men without property.

The Founding Fathers didn’t just overshadow the masses of the country financially, but also intellectually. There is little debate over events that occurred over the crafting of the Constitution were acted out on an intellectual level far above that of today's politics. In his essay, he gives the example of farmers who had only the Bible to read over the duration of his life, Zinn defends that they would not stand a chance against these dually powerful men what allowed the Founding Fathers to easily operate the puppet of the new government with little resistance and to manipulate its citizens into assuming that the Fathers had only the citizens' best interests in mind.

After reading both points of view, I felt like there were more things to back up the arguments made by Zinn, which is one of the reasons why I think that the founding fathers were not in fact democratic reformers. The founding fathers were wealthy statesmen who worked for the best of their interests to preserve their wealth and they based the new Constitution that they enacted off of their own personal experiences without considering the past experiences of the average citizen. That does not make them selfish men and shaped the Constitution to their needs, it just means that many of their economic interests were reflected in the Constitution itself. He goes on about how economic interests were seen in the clauses of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers had a direct economic interest in forming a strong central government. to maintain their privileges while giving enough rights to manipulate the people for political support. I think that Zinn's arguments were backed up very well with information or logistic examples and even though I do think that the founding fathers were democratic reformers to a certain extent.

I also think that because of the fact that many Americans couldn’t vote because of their social status, the entire process, from the calling of the Philadelphia Convention to the state ratifying conventions was non-representative and non-democratic. Therefore, the Constitution wasn’t written to all types of citizens of America and even though economics were the foundation of the Constitution, Zinn’s arguments show that the rebellion was a call for a stronger government. Since it was so weak, the Founding Fathers realized that a change had to be made to create a great market for commerce and they did so.