Origins of American Government

• Essential question: How much power should a government have?

Beginnings of American Government: Enduring Understandings

• Government in the 13 colonies was molded by British ideas, laws, customs, documents, and institutions.
• Reaction to British policies and growing colonial unity resulted in the Revolutionary war for American independence in the late 1700s.
• The government under the Articles of Confederation had weaknesses that threatened the U.S.’s future.
• In 1787, state delegates wrote the U.S. Constitution, after debate and compromises, the new government plan was ratified.

Origins of American Political Ideals

• System of government did not arise suddenly with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, instead the origins of what became the U.S. can be traced back to the mid-16th century when explorers, traders, and settlers first came to North America.
• The French, Dutch, Spanish, Swedes, and others came to explore and settle, but the English arrived in the largest numbers.
• The English controlled the 13 colonies along the Atlantic seaboard.
• Early English settlers brought knowledge of a political system with customs, practices, and institutions.
• English common law, unwritten judge-made law, was an integral part of that system.
• English constitutionalism recognizes that government leaders are subject to the limitations of the law.
• Traditions of common law and constitutionalism influenced the founding of America.
• Many fundamental ideas trace back to ancient times.
• King Hammurabi of Babylonia developed Hammurabi’s Code around 1750 B.C.
• Jewish legal concepts in the Hebrew Bible related to individual worth, fair trial, and the rule of law.
• The English favored the biblical concept of the rule of law, which states the government is always subject to, never above, the law.
• Ancient Romans occupied much of England from A.D. 43 to 410 and left a legacy of law, religion, and custom.
• The English colonists brought three basic notions when shaping government in the U.S.
• English colonists saw the need for orderly regulation of their relationships with one another, that is a need for government.
• They created local governments, based on those they knew in England.
• Units of government established included sheriff, justice of the peace, grand jury, and counties.
• Colonists brought the idea that government is restricted in what it may do which is called limited government, and it was rooted in English belief and practice.
• Colonists believed every individual has rights that government cannot take away.
• Early English settlers carried across representative government which states that government should serve the will of the people.
• People should have a voice in deciding what government should and shouldn't do.

Influential Documents and Ideas

• Basic notions of ordered, limited, and representative government can be traced to ideas that emerged hundreds of years before the English reached North America.
• King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215.
• Weary of military campaigns and heavy taxes, barons sought protection against heavy-handed acts by the king.
• The Magna Carta included guarantees of fundamental rights such as trial by jury and due process of law.
• Protections were intended for the privileged classes.
• Over time, the Magna Carta became the rights of all English people.
• Magna Carta established the critical idea that the monarchy's power was not absolute.
• In 1628, Charles I asked Parliament for more money in taxes, Parliament refused until he signed the Petition of Right.
• The Petition of Right limited the king's power, it demanded the king no longer imprison or punish any person but by the lawful judgment of peers or by the law of the land.
• The Petition of Right also insisted that the king may not impose martial law, or require homeowners to shelter troops without their consent.
• The Petition of Right stated that no man should be compelled to make any gift, loan, benevolence, or tax without consent of parliament.
• The Petition challenged the divine right of kings, declaring that even a monarch must obey the law of the land.
• In 1689, after revolt and turmoil, Parliament offered the William and Mary of Orange the crown, the events was the Glorious Revolution.
• To prevent abuse of power, Parliament drew up the English Bill of Rights, which prohibited a standing army in peacetime except with consent of Parliament.
• The English Bill of Rights required that all parliamentary elections be free.
• The document declared that suspending laws, or execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament is illegal.
• Levying money without grant of Parliament is illegal, and it is the right of the subjects to petition the king.
• Prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.
• The English Bill of Rights included guarantees such as the right to fair trial, as well as freedom from excessive bail and from cruel and unusual punishment.

Three Types of Colonies

• England's colonies in North America have been, described as "schools of government" because it was the setting in which Americans first began to learn the difficult art of government.
• English and other Europeans didn’t introduce the idea of government to the Americas, several Native American societies already had complex systems like the Iroquois League.
• Thirteen of England's North American colonies broke away from Great Britain, these 13 were established over a span of some 125 years.
• Colonies were born out of a particular set of circumstances
• Virginia organized as a commercial venture with employees of the Virginia Company of London, a private trading corporation.
• Massachusetts was settled by people who came in search of personal and religious freedom.
• King George II granted Georgia to 21 trustees, who governed the colony.
• Each colony was established based on a charter, a written grant of authority from the king.
• This charter gave colonists or companies a grant of land and some governing rights, while the Crown retained a certain amount of power over a colony.
• Instruments of government led to different types of colonies: royal, proprietary, and charter.
• On the eve of the American Revolution in 1775, there were eight royal colonies: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
• Royal colonies were subject to the direct control of the Crown.
• The king named a governor to serve as the colony's chief executive, and a council named by the king served as an advisory body to the royal governor.
• Later, the governor's council became both the upper house of colonial legislature and the colony's highest court.
• The lower house of a bicameral legislature was elected by those property owners qualified to vote.
• The house shared with the governor and his council the power of the purse, the power to tax and spend.
• The governor, advised by the council, appointed judges for the colony's courts.
• Proprietor colonies: Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware which is when the king granted land to a person to whom the king had made a grant of land.
• Proprietor had a charter that land could be settled and governed much as the proprietor chose.
• In 1632, the king granted Maryland to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who intended it as a haven for Catholics.
• In 1681, Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn and in 1682, Penn acquired Delaware.
• The governments were much like those in the royal colonies.
• Pennsylvania had a unicameral body.
• The Frame of Government, a constitution that William Penn drew up, was democratic.
• Appeals of decisions could be carried to the king in London.
• Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first charter colony in 1629.
• Connecticut and Rhode Island were charter colonies founded by religious dissidents from Massachusetts that later received royal charters as well.
• They were largely self-governing.
• The governors of Connecticut and Rhode Island were elected by the white, male property owners.
• Laws made by bicameral legislatures were not subject to the governor’s veto nor the Crown’s approval, and appeals could be taken from the colonial courts to the king.
• The Connecticut and Rhode Island charters were so liberal that, after independence, they were kept with only minor changes as State constitutions.

British Colonial Policies

• Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
• Much of British political history can be told in terms of the struggle for supremacy between the monarch and Parliament.
• Parliament paid little attention to the American colonies until late in the colonial period, instead they were controlled by the king.
• Over the century and a half that followed settlement at Jamestown, the colonies developed within royal control.
• The colonists of time became used to a large measure of self-government.
• Each colonial legislature began to assume broad lawmaking powers.
• They bent a royal governor to their will by not voting the money for his salary until he came to terms with them.
• By the mid-1700s, the relationship between Britain and the colonies had become federal.
• Central government in London was responsible for colonial defense and foreign affairs.
• It provided a uniform system of money and credit and a common market for colonial trade.
• Beyond that, the colonies were allowed a fairly wide amount of self-rule and were largely ignored on trade.
• Shortly after George III came to the throne in 1760, however, Britain began to deal more firmly with its colonies.
• New taxes were levied to help pay the costs incurred during the French and Indian War (1754-1763).
• Many colonists strong exception to those policies.
• They objected to taxes imposed which they claimed was "taxation without representation."
• They saw little need for the costly presence of British troops on North American soil, since the French had been defeated.
• Yet at the same time, the colonists still considered themselves British subjects loyal to the Crown.
• Colonial unity decision to revolt was something not done lightly.

Growing Colonial Unity

• In 1643, the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut settlements formed the New England Confederation for defense against Native American tribes.
• In 1696, William Penn offered an elaborate plan for intercolonial cooperation, largely in trade, defense, and criminal matters.
• In 1754, the British Board of Trade called a meeting of seven of the northern colonies at Albany.
• Benjamin Franklin offered what came to be known as the Albany Plan of Union.
• Proposed an annual congress of delegates from each of the 13 colonies, which would have the power to raise military and naval forces, make war and peace with Native Americans, regulate trade, tax, and collect customs duties.
• The Stamp Act Congress marked the first time a significant number of the colonies had joined to oppose the British government.
• In October of 1765, nine colonies sent delegates to a meeting in New York, the Stamp Act Congress.
• There, the Declaration of Rights and Grievances against the new British policies was prepared and sent to the king.
• Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, but new laws and policies tied the colonies more closely to London.
• Colonists showed their anger by evading the laws, mob violence erupted, and many colonists supported a boycott of English goods.
• Organized resistance was carried on through Committees of Correspondence, formed by Samuel Adams in Boston in 1772.

First Continental Congress

• In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed laws to punish the colonists for the troubles, and these new laws prompted widespread calls for a meeting of the colonies.
• Delegates from every colony except Georgia met in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774 and discussed the worsening situation.
• Those delegates sent a Declaration of Rights, protesting Britain's colonial policies, to King George III.
• The delegates also urged the colonies to refuse all trade with England until the taxes and trade regulations were repealed.
• Delegates called for creation of local committees that would enforce that boycott, with a second congress called for the following May.
• Over the next several months, all 13 colonial legislatures gave their support to the actions of the First Continental Congress.

Second Continental Congress

• The Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, by then, the Revolution had begun.
• With this bloodshed, many delegates believed that compromise with Great Britain was no longer possible.
• Each of the 13 colonies sent representatives to Congress which President was John Hancock of Massachusetts.
• Hancock joined the Virginia delegation in June 1775 to be part of the creation of an army then making George Washington as Commander in Chief.
• When King George III rejected the petition, the delegates began discussing other strategies for responding to England.
• The Second Continental Congress by force of circumstance, became the nation's first national government that was condemned by the British.
• It rested on no constitutional base.
• It was supported by public opinion and practical necessity.

The Declaration of Independence

• Slightly more than a year after the Revolution began, Virginia's Richard Henry Lee proposed that the United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.
• As debate on Lee's resolution began, Congress named a committee, including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, to prepare a proclamation of independence to recognize what England is not doing was very largely the work of Jefferson.
• As a lawyer, had gained notoriety through an essay in 1774 in which he argued for colonial independence.
• Crafted the document drew from the Enlightenment thinker John Locke, in particular the ideas of natural rights and social contract theory.
• Locke believed that people have natural rights-rights that belong to them simply because they are human, and put forward his own view of the social contract theory.
• People form governments to protect their natural rights, but they do not surrender control over their government.
• Congress delegates wanted it to be unanimous but on July 4, approved the Declaration of Independence stating: It is self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights.
• New government founded instead was a popular sovereignty and limited government.

State Constitutions and America's Founding Documents

• Initial constitutions shared common features with America’s founding documents such as popular sovereignty and limited government.
• In January 1776, New Hampshire adopted a constitution to replace its royal charter.
• Less than three months later, South Carolina followed suit which urged colonies to elect "such governments as shall..best happiness and safety of their constituents."
• Drafting State Constitutions in 1776 and 1777, most of the States adopted written constitutions.
• Massachusetts set a lasting example in the constitution-making process. There, a convention submitted its work to the voters for ratification.
• Early State constitutions differed, but the most common features were of popular sovereignty, limited government, civil rights and liberties, separation of powers, and checks and balances.
• The new State governments could exercise only those powers granted to them by the people through the constitution.
• Seven of the new documents began with a bill of rights, setting out the "unalienable rights" held by the people.
• The powers granted to new State governments were divided among three distinct branches: executive, legislative, and judicial so actions of the government couldn't restrain another.

Articles of the Confederation: First Steps

• First/Second Continental Congresses had existed as needed, in order to create that government for the nation. This meant a new foundation was being layed
• Richard Henry Lee's resolution that led to the Declaration of Independence also called on the Second Continental Congress to propose "a plan of confederation" to the States.
• One question widely discussed was States contribution in taxes in the region
• Finally, on November 15, 1777, after various other issues were resolved, the Articles of Confederation were approved at last "a firm league of friendship"
• Government set up by the Articles was simple and unicameral - Each State had only one vote in the Congress, regardless of pop.
• No executive or judicial branch established at the start
• Congress had several strong power like the use of war and peace treaty agreement
• Weaknesses include no power to tax, no regulation of trades, and very small amount of power to regulate or ask for new laws

The Nation in Trouble in the 1780's and 90's

• 1781, after the Revolutionary War had won, and many economical problems in the States
• Government was unable to act/manage
• The start of the "Shay's Rebellion" caused political people to become on edge
• Maryland and Virginia made a agreement to go to conference, in order to solve the problems, but many stated the congress has to make change now

A Convention arises

• Mayland and Virginia made a "change" in a conference near a water
• The Virginia general assembly was to consider if the states had plan to regularize commerce
• September 11,1786, Joint meeting was in Anapolis for new york / new jersey
• Hamilton, James Maddison made a meeting with the states
• Congress would "revising" the article of the confederation to government

Creating and Ratifying the Constitution: Framers point of view

• New government needed to be as good May 25 of that Spring that government arose, to work toward their job The delegates of each states met and worked toward that Baron ,locke, rossen, and willam agreed and worked to solve the issues of how a better government will be structured
• 12 out of 13 were present in the meeting to discuss if new changes could form into an government that all can agree too

A New generation of politics was needed

• new generation would soon see what kind of future they were making
• July 25 government needed a quorum and the states were on hand again
• Washington soon become president to what they were setting into the world
• With the momentous session and events the framers wanted to do all they could in their power for every state to have a right to vote etc
• Framers saw themsevles as a "redefine" of the articals to a new system
• New governor
• The new governor has the power to veto

A Virginia point of view:

• Government can not meet everyone's goals and some people need to accept that fact- so that state can agree towards more votes

Many debates in what is equal and just and right within a group of people

Benjamin said "henceforth prayers imploding on God to help guide us" Continnient delegate helped by agreeing

• Senate is smaller but it still great James wilsion thought what a government to follow and be for After long months It was ready. The plan was presented, the states voted, and it was in the books