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The Role Of Democracy In Colonial America

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During the time that the United States Founding Fathers were planning to escape the grasp of British control, they dealt with the controversial issues that emerged from deciding on a necessary structure for the new government. The selection lied in the values of a republic, a representative government ruled by law, and a Democracy ruled by the majority; and the direct concept of democracy is one that the Founding Fathers disagreed with. Revolutionary leaders found the principle of democracy troubling because they feared that the rule of the majority could cause a tyranny, they believed that the average voter was politically ignorant, and the democratic value of equality was contradicted by the colonies' narrow vision of who were considered equal.

Thomas Jefferson stated that, "democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%." His opinion …show more content…
When writing, "Democracy In America," Tocqueville emphasized that 'societal attitudes and tendencies' in Colonial America diminishes what truly is equal in itself. He argued that the bonds of society would be reduced if each person had an excessive drive for individualism because people would depend on one another much less. The essence of equality leads to deciding on what makes a person equal to another, and who are the people, specifically in Colonial America? When writing the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers were faced with these questions and they themselves couldn't clearly identify how far the democratic government's principles would extend as they withheld the rights of women, Native Americans, and African American slaves in the Declaration. The aspect of slavery was extremely inconsistent in their ideology, and while the narrow vision of "the people" prevailed the democratic value of equality could not yet

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