It is easy to get confused about the founders. They worked together to create the constitution, but North and South never really understood each other well. Philadelphia, Boston, and New York formed one axis. But the other axis stretched from Georgia to Virginia. They joined to fight the British. Without Unity, there would have been no United States and the States of the North would have gone from Colonies to neo-colonies and never escaped oppression. That unity was formed around economic, cultural and familial ties. But it also was formed around a willingness to embrace the concepts of Federalism, Democratic Republicanism, commonwealth and Democracy.
Multiple Influences
Some of those principles came from history and philosophers. But some of the sources were more intimate. Formal influences came from experience with the Dutch, the Swiss, Italian City States & Ancient Greece. They also came from enlightenment writers. But additional experience was informed by our own maritime history with piracy and privateering, conscription and militias. And our experience with neighbors like our own Indigineous.
Federation and the Indigineous
The Indigenous practiced forms of Democracy and Federation, that may have influenced the formation of our country. Politifact quotes Jon W. Parmenter's The Edge of The Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701:
“It is highly probable that Anglo-Americans during the revolutionary era looked to Haudenosaunee governance as a model of a successful collective polity, and borrowed elements of Haudenosaunee practice in developing revolutionary American constitutional governments,”
Politifact also cites a speech given in 1744, by Canassatego, an Onondaga chief, to representatives from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia at a treaty conference in Lancaster, Pa.:
“We heartily recommend Union and a good Agreement between you our Brethren,...Never disagree, but preserve a strict Friendship for one another, and thereby you, as well as we, will become the stronger. Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighbouring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy; and, by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power; therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another.”
However, it wasn't Democracy that made the Iroquois so powerful it was the concepts of Federation. The viral meme about the Iroquois conflates Democratic, Republican and Federation principles. The “E Pluribus Unum” concept is what the Iroquois were talking about and what Benjamin Franklin and others was referencing with his famous and somewhat brutal quote that if the Iroquois:
“capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union," then the new nation of European origin should be able to as well.”
So the idea of Democracy was not central to the indigineous influence on our founders. They were worried about what happens when States start out in disunity; they go to war. Federation is about avoiding and mitigating conflict.
“The concept [of Federation is] based on peace and consensus rather than fighting."
Pirates and Democracy
I've found compelling evidence that Robert and Governeuer Morris were pirates. And Hamilton was not perfect either. But I've also found evidence they were nationalists, just as patriotic as the Southerners, abolitionists and wanted a unified nation not a confederacy. His work with Madison and Jefferson gave us a Strong nation that still survives.
Had we been a loose confederacy, the Civil war would have started sooner and never ended. Fractured states are subject to external predation, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Hamilton wanted direct election of the President. He was able to stop the Congress from making the selection of the President by the State Governors or Congress, but the Electoral College was a compromise with Southern Politicians who did not want popular sovereignty.
He also gave us a strong independent judiciary, which has saved us, even when it has been somewhat corrupt at times. As we can see right now, a Judiciary subject to executive and legislature, in the hands of a corrupt factional legislation and executive, would be the death knell of our Republic.
The General Welfare clause has allowed our country to serve its people instead of its oligarchs.
And Morris was the loudest, and pretty much the solo, voice against slavery at the Convention. Had he been listened to we might have avoided the Civil War.
So these fellows, who in some ways were pirates, learned some of their appreciation for liberty from that. Robert Morris ran a pirate fleet during the Revolution. Like I said, pirates tended to be more democratic. Privateers, not so much. As I've noted before Thom Paine also learned something about democracy from crewing on Privateers. The ones that treated people fairly also operated more democratically -- and more like free pirate ships.
Just some thoughts from an article I've been reading.
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