Foundational Principles

What are the fundamental ideas that form the basis of American government?

During the American Revolution, each colony became a state and created a state government. At the end of the American Revolution, all 13 states joined together to create a government for the entire country, which is called a national, or federal, government.

As each state was forming its government, men stepped forward and volunteered to help organize that government. At this time in our history, only white men could be political leaders. Women and men of other races, like African Americans, did not get to participate in making these new governments, even though they had to live under the governments once they were created.

Although each state government was different, most of the men who created them shared the same ideas about the purpose of government and the foundational principles that should be the basis of good government.

The form of government they created was different from all the other governments in the world at that time. No other country in the world was run by the people. All of the other countries had rulers who only sometimes listened to the people they governed. Usually these rulers did what they thought was best, without consulting the people, and they often made decisions based on what would help them and their friends rather than everyone else.

Instead, America’s political leaders decided that government should exist to help all of the people, not just the powerful ones. This type of government was based on these five foundational principles.

1. The Social Contract

The first of these ideas was that government was based on a social contract, or an agreement between the government and the people. The people give some of their rights to the government. People agree that they are not free to do things like hurt other people or take other people’s property.

In return for the people giving up some of their rights, the government tries to protect the people from certain kinds of dangers, like an invasion from another country. The government also helps people work together to build a strong community to support each other.

2. The Common Good

The men who founded American government also believed that the purpose of government was to benefit everyone in a society, not just a few people. They believed that the government should work for the common good.

When people made decisions about what the government should do, they were also expected to consider what was best for the common good. In other words, people were supposed to think about others, not just themselves.

3. Representative Democracy

How would so many people make decisions together? Americans agreed that government should be based on the idea of representative democracy. A representative democracy means that the people elect other people to represent them in the government. Representatives make decisions about what the government should do for the people who elected them.

4. The Rule of Law

Laws are an important part of any society. They limit what people can do so that they don’t hurt other people. Laws punish people who don’t follow the rules that the government makes. The law also protects our freedom and allows us to do the things we want to do. Laws make it possible for progress to happen because we know the law will stop other people from taking away what we build or create. The rule of law means that everyone agrees to a set of rules and then everyone follows the rules. The most important rules of a government are written down in a document called a constitution.

In America, no one is above the law, meaning that every person must follow the law. In other words, all laws apply to all of the people. Since the laws apply to everyone, we are all equally responsible for following the laws. If we don’t follow the law, then we are probably hurting someone else and not respecting their rights.

5. Limited Government

One of the most important reasons Americans rebelled against Great Britain was that Americans thought the British government was interfering with their lives too much. Instead, Americans wanted a government that would help them when they needed help but would leave them alone most of the time.

They came up with several ways to limit the power of government in America. Two ways of limiting government were particularly important.

First, they wrote down in constitutions all the things government could and could not do. Having a constitution keeps the government from growing too big and powerful. Everyone knows what the government’s powers are because they are written down for everyone to see.

Second, the government’s power was split into different levels: the national government, state governments, and local governments. This division of government power is called federalism. If the government is divided this way no part of the government grows too big because each level of government can only govern in its own area. This means that federalism limits the power of the government.

As each colony became a state, the political leaders in each state wrote a constitution and created a state government. Although each state government was a little bit different from the others, they were all founded on these five fundamental ideas. When the 13 states came together to form a government for the whole country, the national government was also based on these five ideas.

For more about the foundations of American government and how it works in our own time, go to Unit 18: Civics and Government Today.

N.H. State Constitution

What is a constitution?

A constitution is a written document that explains the social contract the people have made with the government. It states what the government can and cannot do. Constitutions also limit the power of government because the government’s powers are written down for everyone to see. If the government tries to do more than it is allowed to do, the people can point to the constitution to show that the government is trying to expand its power. In this way, constitutions also protect people’s rights because they often include a list of exactly what the people’s rights are.

How did New Hampshire write a constitution and create a state government?

New Hampshire was the first of the 13 colonies to write a constitution. But this constitution, which was adopted in January 1776, was only supposed to be in place during the Revolutionary War. It was a temporary constitution, and it created a temporary government. Even before the war ended, the people of New Hampshire started asking for a new constitution to create a more permanent state government.

There were lots and lots of things to decide so New Hampshire’s political leaders decided to hold a big meeting to debate these questions and write a constitution. This meeting was called a constitutional convention, and New Hampshire held the first constitutional convention ever. It was held in Exeter in 1778. Each town elected delegates, who were usually the most respected men of the community, to represent them at the constitutional convention.

Once the delegates wrote a constitution that most of them agreed on, they shared the constitution with the people of New Hampshire to see what they thought. Unfortunately, the people didn’t like the first constitution the delegates produced. So, the delegates listened to what the people said, made changes to the constitution, and wrote another draft. And the people still didn’t like it! This went on for five years, with the delegates writing new drafts and the people rejecting them.

Finally, in 1783, the people of New Hampshire liked the constitution and voted to adopt it. The constitution went into effect in 1784. Although parts of the 1784 state constitution have been changed over the years, it is still the same constitution New Hampshire has today. In fact, it is the second oldest constitution in the United States. Only Massachusetts’ constitution is older.

N.H. Bill of Rights

In 1784, the N.H. Bill of Rights listed 38 rights that belonged to the people. The government cannot make laws that take away these rights. The people have rights that remain in their control. The government is not allowed to infringe on those rights.

However, the government is responsible for protecting everyone in a society, so it can limit people’s rights to protect other people’s rights.

Believing in the common good means recognizing that everyone else’s rights are just as important as your own. For example, you may have a right to swing your arm, but you don’t have the right to swing your arm so far that it hits somebody else. The laws that the government makes help people remember that their rights have limits and that other people have rights too.

Although the 38 rights listed in the N.H. Constitution cover a lot of different topics, they can be grouped into a few categories:

• Protections for people who have been accused or convicted of a crime to make sure they are treated fairly
• Limits on the power of New Hampshire’s government
• Reminders of the importance of a free press, meaning the government can’t control what journalists write and publish
• Freedoms that are guaranteed to all people who live in New Hampshire, like the freedom to speak freely, to think and believe what we want, and to meet together in groups

All of the state constitutions written after the American Revolution included a bill of rights that are like the one in the N.H. Constitution. Americans had just fought a war against Great Britain because they thought the British government didn’t respect their rights. They wanted to make sure that the new governments they created always remembered and protected these rights because these rights were very important to them. As long as the people had these rights, they knew they had their liberty.

The N.H. Constitution has been changed many times since 1784, and the list of the people’s rights has gotten longer. There are now 87 rights listed in the N.H. Constitution!

N.H. Form of Government

The N.H. Constitution divided the state government into three branches:

• Executive Branch: the governor, the executive council, and all of the state offices
• Legislative Branch: the state legislature, which is called the General Court. The legislature is split between the N.H. House of Representatives and the N.H. Senate
• Judicial Branch: the court system

Each branch has specific powers that the other branches don’t have. Also, each branch can check the other branches, which keeps any one branch from becoming too powerful. Most of the people who hold offices in the state government are elected by the people, and many of them can be voted out of office if the people don’t like what they do while in office. All three branches work for the common good of the people of New Hampshire.

More information about the division of power between these three branches of government and the way each branch works is in Unit 18: Civics and Government Today.

The N.H. Constitution also includes a section that discusses the importance of education in a free society. The people must know how their government works when they are responsible for making decisions about what the government will do.

The N.H. Constitution supports education as a way to teach people about civic virtues that are important for a democratic government, things like honesty, kindness, charity, and hard work. A democracy that is run by the people requires each of us to play an important role in supporting our government and respecting each other’s rights. If each of us practices these civic virtues, then the government won’t have to step in to protect people’s rights as often.

The N.H. Constitution of 1784 also said that every seven years, the people of New Hampshire got to vote on whether they want to hold a new constitutional convention and make changes to the constitution.

By making the government check in with the people on a regular basis, the writers of the N.H. Constitution hoped that the constitution could be kept up-to-date with the changing times and they could fix anything in the constitution that wasn’t working right.

Who got to vote under the N.H. Constitution of 1784?

At this time in American history, voting was usually allowed just for white men who had a lot of money. The N.H. Constitution allowed more white men to vote than other states did because in New Hampshire white men did not need to own a certain amount of property to vote. They only needed to pay taxes.

But lots of people were not allowed to vote at all in New Hampshire, including women, who were half of the population. Even if a woman owned property and paid taxes, she was not allowed to vote in New Hampshire, or any other state, at this time. Women would not be able to vote in the state for over 100 more years.

Men who were not white were not allowed to vote either in New Hampshire or the other states. So an African American or Native American man could not vote even if he owned property and paid taxes. These laws did not change for nearly 100 years either.

The Path to the U.S. Constitution

Why do we need a national government?

Each state wrote its own constitution and created its own government after the American Revolution, but the United States also needed a national government that would govern the entire country.

A national government that would serve all 13 states needed to do several things:

• It needed to provide defense for the United States so that the country wasn’t taken over by another country.
• It needed to settle arguments or disagreements between the states.
• It needed to encourage trade and business between the states.
• It needed to encourage trade and business between the United States and other countries.
• It needed to make sure that the state governments were not infringing on the rights that were guaranteed to all Americans.

Americans were committed to the ideas listed in the Declaration of Independence—that the United States should treat all men equally and allow them as much freedom as possible. This is what the Declaration of Independence meant when it said that we are all entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our country hasn’t always practiced these ideas as well as it could, but Americans believe we should always keep trying.

What was the first national government in the United States?

Toward the end of the American Revolution, political leaders from all of the states created a national government after writing a document called the Articles of Confederation. Most Americans didn’t want a strong national government. Instead, they wanted most government to come from the states because each state was so different. The Articles of Confederation reflected this idea.

But the government created by the Articles of Confederation was too weak to get anything done. After just a few years, many Americans thought the Articles of Confederation needed to be rewritten so that the government would work better at protecting Americans and promoting their freedom and happiness.

How was the Constitution written?

In 1786, political leaders from all over America got together at a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, to rewrite the Articles of Confederation. Once the meeting started they decided to get rid of the Articles of Confederation altogether and create an entirely new form of government.

The following summer, the political leaders met again, this time in Philadelphia, to write a new constitution for the United States. This meeting is now called the Constitutional Convention, and the men who attended it are called America’s Founding Fathers.

The rest of the Constitution is divided into seven sections, which are called articles. The first three articles explain the three branches of the national government because the U.S. government is divided into three parts, just like New Hampshire’s state government.

• Legislative Branch: Congress, which is split between two houses, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate (Article 1)
• Executive Branch: the president (Article 2)
• Judicial Branch: the court system (Article 3)

Just like in state governments, each branch of the U.S. government has specific powers that the other branches don’t have. Also, each branch can check the other branches, which keeps any one branch from becoming too powerful. This idea is called checks and balances. The most common check is that many of the people who hold offices in the U.S. government are elected by the people and can be voted out of office if the people don’t like the job they do. All three branches work for the common good of the American people.

More information about the division of power between these three branches of government and the way each branch works is in Unit 18: Civics and Government Today.

The other four articles of the U.S. Constitution discuss the relationship between the states and the federal government, the requirements for the Constitution’s ratification, and ways to change the U.S. Constitution, which is called amending the Constitution.

The U.S. Constitution that the Founding Fathers wrote in 1787 did not include a bill of rights, which is a list of the people’s rights. In fact, it didn’t even mention people’s rights. This issue would come up when it came time for the people to adopt the U.S. Constitution.

Did everyone agree on the form of government the U.S. Constitution created?

The Founding Fathers agreed on a lot when it came to writing the U.S. Constitution, especially the foundational principles of government. But there were also some pretty big issues that they didn’t agree on. They had to work out compromises on these issues if they were going to create a government for everyone.

Let’s look at some of those issues to see how the delegates worked together to find a compromise that everyone could live with.

The Connecticut Compromise: The delegates from Connecticut suggested a compromise. Their idea was to adopt the Virginia Plan for the U.S. House of Representatives and the New Jersey Plan for the U.S. Senate.

So the number of representatives each state gets in the House of Representatives is based on how many people live in that state. The big states—like Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania—have more representatives than the small states—like New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Delaware.

But the U.S. Senate is different. In the Senate, each state has two senators, no matter how big or small the state is.

Through this compromise, each state got some—but not all—of what it wanted, and the effort to create a new government could move forward. It is compromises like this one that allows the government to function in a country that has so many people, who all have different views and opinions.

Slavery

The other big compromise at the Constitutional Convention was about slavery. Slavery was a labor system in America. Black people were taken from Africa and brought to this country where they were forced to work for white people. Enslaved people had no freedom and could not leave. When they had children, their children were enslaved too.

Although slavery existed throughout the original 13 colonies, many of the colonies in the northern part of America ended slavery after the American Revolution. Enslaved people who lived in these states were freed over time. In the southern part of America, slavery expanded after the American Revolution.

During the Constitutional Convention, delegates from the southern states wanted the Constitution to protect slavery, but many delegates from the northern states wanted to end slavery, or at least limit it. In the end, the Constitution did provide some protection for slavery but not as much protection as the southerners wanted. It was a compromise that allowed the work on the Constitution to go forward, but not very many people were happy about it.

Adopting the Constitution

How was the U.S. Constitution adopted?

After the delegates at the Constitutional Convention finished writing the U.S. Constitution, they sent it to the states so the states could adopt it, which is called ratification. In order for the Constitution to be ratified, 9 of the 13 states had to vote to approve it.

Not all Americans liked the new U.S. Constitution, though. Many of them thought the Constitution made the national government too powerful. Even more people were unhappy that the Constitution didn’t include a bill of rights that listed the rights guaranteed to the people, like state constitutions did.

The political leaders who supported the Constitution promised Americans that they would adopt a bill of rights after the Constitution was approved.

Eventually, after lots of debate, enough Americans supported the Constitution that states started to ratify it.

New Hampshire voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution on June 17, 1788. It was the ninth state to ratify it, which was a very important number. Once nine states had adopted it, the Constitution would become the official law of the land, and the government created by the Constitution would go into effect, even in states that hadn’t ratified the Constitution yet. So New Hampshire’s vote to ratify it was an important moment in American history.

The new American government was scheduled to start operating on March 4, 1789, after elections were held in each state to find out who would represent the people in this new democracy .

The Bill of Rights

What is the Bill of Rights, and how does it protect our rights?

When the U.S. Constitution was written, many Americans were worried that some of their most important rights, such as freedom of speech, were not listed in the document. In 1791, two years after the Constitution went into effect, Americans amended the Constitution by adding a list of rights that they believed were the most important for their liberty and freedom. This list, which contains 10 amendments to the Constitution, became known as the Bill of Rights.

Conclusion

Ratifying the Constitution and passing the Bill of Rights were the final steps in creating the new nation of the United States. The 13 original states had come together in a long process of compromise to create a new system of government that tried to balance order and liberty. This was a big change from the way nations had been governed in the past and in other countries.

There were other big changes coming up. While the Founding Fathers were busy building a government, ordinary people were busy building their communities and providing for basic needs. Just like there were big changes in our government, there were big changes to come in the way people lived and worked. At the beginning of the 1800s, most people in New Hampshire were farmers and lived in small towns. By the end of the 1800s, most people worked in factories and lived in cities with thousands of other people.