Module 5

The United States of America was built from violence due to the need for control. From the torture of the Indians, slaves and servants all the way to the blood shed during the Revolutionary war. Since day one, those who have power had taken advantage of others. And we are supposed to a democratic nation where all people hold power? Everything we do and have done in this nation is violent, it might not be physical violence but the emotional violence of power over another human being.  

As noted on Merriam Webster online dictionary, democracy is defined as a government by the people especially rule of the majority.  According to this definition, the United States Constitution is defining a democratic government. The problem is that the “people” with the power does not include everyone.

Historian Charles Beard recognized that there were four groups that were left out of the Constitutional Convention. Those groups consisted of slaves, indentured servants, women, and men without property. Besides the fact that they were all men, Beard also found that the majority that made the Constitution were “lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping, that half of them had money loaned out at interest, and that forty of the fifty-five held government bonds.” (Zinn, 68) The downfall to being excluded from the Constitutional Convention also meant that the interests of these groups were also left out of the Constitution.

The way that the United States Constitution was worded allows for many different interpretations, depending on how you look at it. Charles Beard looks at the Constitution from an economic point of view and says that those who drew up the Constitution made things a certain way to protect their interest, or the groups that represented their interests. Beard warned that “governments, including the government of the United States are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their constitutions are intended to serve these interests.” (Zinn, 75) So even though the Constitution defines our government as a democracy, it is hard to have a democratic government in an economically polarized society because only those interests get noticed.

While making the Constitution, these men made sure that their interests were protected. Beard noted that most of the men had “some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indians lands; slaveowners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.” (Zinn, 69.) No one had interests in women’s rights or equality for blacks and whites or any interests in the Indians, except their land.

These are the same men that wanted to be free from under the British rule. But they turn around and make themselves in charge and the lower classes full of slaves, women, servants and non-property holders had to suffer. Once these men “found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits and political power from favorites of the British Empire.” (Zinn, 47) By creating a new nation, the upper class, the lawyers and land and slaves owners made a constitution that inevitably was the biggest form of control enforced on the lower classes. Someone wrote in the Boston Gazette “ A few person’s in power were promoting political projects for keeping the people poor in order to make them humble.” (Zinn, 49)

Even when the state constitutions were being created voters were arguing for everyone to have equal rights and for lower classes to have a say in the government. These people opposed “great and overgrown rich men…they will be too apt to be framing distinctions in society.”(Zinn, 50) Sadly to say that still to this day those with the wealth have majority of the power. If you have money, you can influence almost anyone to do things the way you want. As Howard Zinn says Tyranny is Tyranny. But in this case the tyrant is the upper classes. The focus was on the upper class interests. Since they were the ones making the constitution, their needs came first. Even thought the Constitution defines our government as democratic, we are not democratic entirely. Only the wealthy have the say in the government.

Works Cited

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York, NY: New, 2003. Print.