At the Constitutional Convention, both Elbridge Gerry (on May 31) and
Alexander Hamilton (on June 18) identified the principal problem
facing the United States in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War as
an "excess of democracy." In short, the American Revolution had gone
too far. Although prominent modern scholars tend to echo that
judgment, we will never fully understand the context in which the
Constitution was created until we give serious consideration to the
people who took the contrary position that the Revolution had not gone
far enough. They demanded annual elections, the right to instruct
their representatives, small legislative districts, an ample money
supply, low farm taxes, lower-house legislative supremacy, and a
roughly equal distribution of property. Their diverse tools for
obtaining these objectives included conventions, committees of
correspondence, rhetorical broadsides accusing their opponents of
lacking the natural human capacity for fellow-feeling, efforts to
harmonize divergent proposals using the printed word, insurrections
(and, much more commonly, appeals to public officials' fear of
rebellion), and, perhaps most strikingly, the deliberate withholding
of assembly representatives. In many ways, their critique of the
Framers' elitist economic and political ideas was considerably more
fundamental than the issues raised by the Framers' next (and
considerably better-known) round of adversaries, the Anti-Federalists.
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