The newly founded United States government allegedly set out to give representation to the values of the common people. Fundamental ideals of the freshly born country took root in the minds of the men that created our most patriotic documents. But those same men, who we revere and idolize in our schools and lives, actually created the government to favor the wealthy. However, they carefully phrased documents in such a way as to make lower class communities falsely believe that everyone has an equal say in the government, therefore ensuring that the wealthy landowners would retain authority in the newly founded country.
It makes sense that the Founding Fathers would want to keep the power for themselves, considering that they had it even when the US was under British rule. So, by creating the government themselves, these men were able to assure that they would keep that influence. This isn’t to say that the less wealthy people didn’t inspire the revolution – in fact, they played a big part – but it was the prosperous people who created the laws, documents, and speeches that we remember and live by today. The fact that they were well-to-do people probably had an effect on whether they were remembered. Patrick Henry is an example of this. He gave a speech in which he tried to convince the legislators to go to war against England. If he hadn’t been an affluent governor, he probably wouldn’t have been able to speak in front of the House of Burgesses and his speech wouldn’t have been as influential as it was.
Both the plantation owners and the slave traders relied on the black slaves for their livelihood. If slavery were abolished, like the first version of the declaration tried to do, they would have lost their livelihood. This is probably the exact reason that Thomas Jefferson, an owner of hundreds of slaves, deleted that passage from the original Constitution - to protect the wealth, influence, and stature that owning slaves gave men in the revolutionary period.
Even the system of our government was formulated in a way that favored the prosperous politicians. In the Federalist Paper no. 10, James Madison talks about how we must get rid of factions, “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”. At first glance, this seems like a fair need – to stop the people who get in the way of progress in the community. But who determines what qualifies as a disruptive faction? Is it the people who believe in that cause? Or is it the politicians whose control the disruptors are threatening? Our government, a republic, was formed exactly for the purpose of stifling factions because, in a republic, “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states.” This prevents any factions, whether they are beneficial or malicious.
Within this country, even if you did want to run for a governmental position to promote your views, you would need to have enough money. In the revolutionary period, you needed to have 1,000 pounds to run for State Senator and 5,000 pounds for Governor, which would have allowed only about 10 percent of the population to qualify. Even today, you need an education, experience, and a campaign to run for an office, all of which costs a great deal of money. With that strong of a monetary limit, many people would be unable to be a representative of their community, thoroughly defeating the purpose of a fair government.
This country was not solely founded on iconic principles of a new and liberating kind. In fact, the elite were crafting the government and legislature to continue letting the wealthy have the majority of the power, while keeping the citizens under a carefully woven smokescreen of laws and nationalism to hide the fact that they had little, if any, voice in the new world.
