A Blog Exploring American History and Politics
As eluded to in Virtue as a Principle and Foundation, vices had come to plague American society shortly after the American Revolution. Patrick Henry said, in 1780, that he “feared that our Body politic was dangerously sick,” as from top to bottom, society appeared to be embracing vice. Patrick Henry to Jefferson, Feb. 15, 1780, Boyd, […]
MorePrior to the creation and ratification of the Constitution, Americans struggled with legislatures who had run rampant. This, however, was the doing of the people themselves.
MoreWhile there were perceptions that America was suffering from a malaise in the 1780s, the political theory at the time had an explanation: licentiousness.
MoreAfter the American Revolution and after the war with Britain, America was suffering what appeared to be a crisis.
MorePennsylvania was the home of the “most radical ideas about politics and constitutional authority voiced in the Revolution.” Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, 226. This resulted in a “comprehensive examination of assumptions about government that elsewhere were generally taken for granted” and it resulted in one of the greatest experiments in politics […]
MoreConservatives and liberals during the Revolutionary years realized that democracy must have power distributed throughout various sources, known as a mixed government, so as to survive.
MoreAs the American Revolution approached “most Americans had become convinced that they were ‘aptly circumstanced to form the best republicks, upon the best terms that ever came to the lot of any people before us.’” Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, 98 quoting Phila. Pa. Packet, Feb. 12, 1776; Purdie’s Wmsbg. Va. Gazette, May 17, 1776.
MoreAncient Rome and Ancient Greece were intertwined with the American Revolution and the establishment of the American republic.
MoreFor a revolution, and particularly a bloodless revolution, to occur, the momentum must build so that the population’s outrage culminates in a change of power and a change of government. How the people sparking the flame that leads to the roaring fire of revolution is a subject worth studying, as revolutions are an inevitable fact of […]
MoreDespite the fact that the Articles of Confederation loosely held the states together, there was still a remarkable union achieved. There were privileges and immunities granted, “reciprocity of extradition and judicial proceedings among the states,” no “travel and discriminatory trade restrictions between states, and the substantial grant of powers to the Congress in Article 9 […]
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