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Achieving American Democracy was not as simple of a process as writing the Declaration of Independence and then the Constitution. According to Wilentz there were many obstacles involving class warfare that did not make it a smooth transition. Yeoman, gentleman, merchants, and artisans, whether they are city dwellers or rural countrymen, all wanted their rights protected. To me, a key turning point was when the Berkshire Constitutionalists proposed the plan of equal representation that was not rooted in how much wealth or property you had. Another key for democracy in the reading was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which put to rest early the idea of an elected monarch for life. As Thomas stated in his post, to really bind the United States Democracy together as a nation, Shay’s Rebellion was instrumental in getting a stronger federal government planned in the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
In Davis’s Inhuman Bondage, I believe his point was that American Slavery lasted longer here than in other countries because they were too weak as a union to withstand abolition in the early years of the country, and as a result slavery was able to take strong roots into the culture. As Thomas also wrote, keeping slavery was a huge contradiction to the American Revolution. I agree with what Olivia stated, that white colonists wanted liberty from a British oppressor and that was the same logic the slaves followed, but they did not receive it. On of the most interesting take always for me from the Davis reading was that the 1784 Continental Congress was one vote away from outlawing slavery in Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Ohio. If that had passed I think the United States might have been better able to avoid a Civil War because it would have divided the Confederacy in a big way. Ultimately, it was the fear of a Civil War for a just born country that led to the creation of free soil and slave holding places. I also found very interesting in Olivia’s post about how it was the act of making slaves property that led to such a strong slave system.