History of the United States I / Unit 7 USH1 0929 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Checks on Democracy
The idea
Many delegates held serious reservations about democracy, which they believed promoted anarchy. The Electoral College gave each state votes equal to its two senators plus its House delegation, and was designed partly as a safeguard against what delegates saw as the dangers of pure democracy. Senators were chosen by state legislatures rather than voters. Together, the anchor says, these blunted democratic tendencies that appeared to undermine the republic.
In practice
Hamilton telling New York's ratifying convention that the ancient democracies never possessed one feature of good government, and that when they assembled the field of debate presented an ungovernable mob.
Where people slip
The founders were not democrats and did not claim to be. Madison and Hamilton attack democracy by name, in print, as an argument for the Constitution. Critics then and now argue the Electoral College prevents direct election of the president, and the anchor records that objection as contemporaneous rather than modern. Teaching the framers as democrats makes their own most famous writings unreadable.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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