Similarities Between 1776 And The Constitution

ome may argue that Ellis is wrong, and that there is continuity between the American Revolution of 1776 and the Constitution. They may argue that the founding fathers did in fact, “bring forth a new nation” in 1776 which did not change much when the Constitution was ratified. This nation of sorts may be characterized by its disjointedness, and its unity in its desire to stay that way. As Ellis pointed out in the beginning of his book, the states “regarded themselves as mini-nations of their own.” This would be supported by the fact that in the last two Supreme Court cases detailed above, there was serious opposition from people who saw the Court’s decision as an encroachment on state’s rights. In the film, “Gibbons v. Ogden” one such person

The premise that a nation, a unified people with a common heritage and culture, could exist where there is no commonality is absurd. However, even if one was to accept this premise, the argument still cannot stand on its own. The Constitution did not create a nation, but it did create a system which would nudge people’s loyalty away from the states and toward the national government, a process which is still and may never be complete. The discontinuity between the first and second revolutions comes not from a complete change from a confederation to a national government, but rather from a step in that direction. The states had no loyalty to one another before the second American Revolution. Many people were fine with the Articles of Confederation dissolving into regional alliances. After, the northern states were willing to fight a bloody and costly war to preserve the

For example, the extension of property and voting rights to women in the United states was largely driven by political reasons rather than any desire to make women equal to men before the law. In many cases this reason was the need to promote settlement on the frontier. Evidence of this comes from the geographic distribution of the granting of women’s suffrage on the state level before women’s suffrage was granted federally. Nearly all of the states who granted women the right to vote early were western states that needed respectable women to move there in order to create a sustainable population with families. Sometimes, women’s suffrage was granted in order to bolster constituencies. Brigham Young, then the Governor of Utah and leader of the Mormon church, supported women’s suffrage because it would help him maintain political support. Women’s property rights were also tied tightly to expansion along the frontier and the preservation of slavery in the south. Women as well as men were encouraged to move to Florida by the Armed Occupation Act of 1842, which granted homesteads to those willing to move to Florida. Married women were granted property rights in Arkansas in 1835 and Mississippi in 1839, specifically so that they could own slaves. Women’s rights was not the only change fueled by