Kaela Dominguez
Professor Schendan
HIST 15A-4
26, November 2014
The Start of a New Government On July 4, 1776, the Americans took tremendous strides in their freedom from Great Britain’s restraints and remarkably declared their independence, however this forced them to take on the task of creating an overall new government that cherished their values. In our world today, most Americans don’t realize that when the government was first established the main focus was on state governments individually not an overall central authority. There were many concerns pertaining to the Articles of Confederation along with the desire to remove focus from disproportionate democracy, which ultimately led to the new form of government in 1787. Unlike previous forms of government, the new national government was not solely based on one form of government, but rather several combined to create an ideal government for the people. During the Federal Convention, the framers were continuing their focus through the concept of combining monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy and agreed upon the fact that each type of government needs to be involved in order to have a sustainable government. The significant influence of democracy on the founders was based on a mixture of substantive and procedural democracy, which emphasized both the substance of policies and democratic processes that ultimately made the United States what is it today. The framers aimed at replacing the currently weak confederation of states with a much more powerful national government that incorporated elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. The main problem that the founders were trying to overcome was deciding which form of government was truly the best form of government. Alexander Hamilton was leaning toward aristocracy, James Madison and George Mason were strictly inclined to democracy, and Elbridge Gerry was in between democracy and monarchy or aristocracy. The founders saw the position of the president as the right amount of monarchy for the new government because the president could be seen as the focal point as well as emphasize strong leaders. The Collins Dictionary defines monarchy as, “A form of government in which supreme authority is vested in a single and usually hereditary figure, such as a king, and whose powers can vary from those of an absolute despot to those of a figurehead.” This puts the President in control of the country as a whole emphasizing the highest power one could ever achieve. The President also has the power through the legislative branch to either sign bills into legislation or veto them after they are passed in Congress. Electors that were chosen by the states would elect the president, which puts the power in the hands of the people. The Collins Dictionary defines Aristocracy as, “A privileged class of people usually of high birth or nobility upon which a state is governed by.” Aristocracy could be seen in the new government through the Senate, which were officials chosen by state legislatures, because it highlighted a direct focus on the best and the brightest people to create laws under the judicial branch. These people were chosen to make decisions that most people without their brilliant minds would be incapable of, however they did tend to make themselves feel above all the others. The main focus for the founders was incorporating democracy without it seeming like a “mobocracy” and they accomplished this through the House of Representatives. The Collins Dictionary defines it as, “A government by the people or their elected representatives.” Through representative democracy, which is when voters or the people choose the officials to create laws on their behalf. The House of Representatives underlined mass participation allowing the decisions that were made to be more legitimate by those officials in the House being elected directly by the people. The founders pushed the basis of the new form of government as democracy because they
