Ep 1. The Effects of The Wild Demography of America in 1776 On The War & The Constitution

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Introduction

Inspirational fact: America in 1776 had less people than Las Vegas now, but had more land than France and Great Britain combined.

What follows are some facts about America at the time of its inception that are downright wild, and the knock-on effects of them are debatable in scope but undeniable. One should really let these seemingly benign stats, and their implications, sink in for a minute. The repercussions from them are lasting and affect the lives of Americans to this day, and while they’re not hidden from view they are rarely ever taught or discussed. This should be rectified, because only through understanding the realities, the context of what the country was and what it’s people were dealing with, can we truly understand the central governmental document the founders handed down to us, that for better or worse have their fingers in all Americans daily life. Of course the unique governing document that has survived the trials of time and is intertwined with the lives of all Americans daily is The Constitution Of The United States Of America. Only after understanding more about the context of the time can we better understand its inherent “whys & hows”, and be able to correctly reflect on the accomplishments and mistakes within it. Only then can we better understand our country and political reality.

As Peter Zeihan (and others before him) like to say, demography is destiny. But what if the demography of your destiny isn’t at all like that of your beginning, when, you know, you’re creating the rules the country will live and die by forever? What happens then?

Statistics of population and geography of the US and how that compared to Europe.

The population of the entirety of the 13 colonies in 1776 is estimated to be 2.5 million people. That is roughly the population of current day metro area Las Vegas. In 1790, the first year we have any census data, the population was 3,293,214. So in 1787, the year in which the US constitution was created, we can assume the US’s population was somewhere around 3.1 million people. The current population of the US is 332 million. This means America has grown roughly 110x in its 245 years. And while that growth is indeed interesting, the real mind bending statistic is just how small the population of the US was when it embarked upon its own revolution.

The statistics become even more surreal when you consider that 20% of America at the time were slaves, who – dreadfully so – weren’t considered citizens in the slightest and no one planned on them being able to vote. Nor did they envision women voting at the time either. This means that while in 1776 no one was voting, it does mean that when the country embarked upon becoming an independent democracy there were an estimated 2 million “full citizens”, with only 1 million of them being thought of as potential voters . That means there are more people in Dallas today than there were potential voters in America when it embarked upon becoming it’s own country. That should raise an eye.

But there is another type of size to consider here as well, that of land. The 13 colonies geographical size was 430,000 square miles, which is larger than that of Ethiopia, the largest country in East Africa. More important is the comparison to the other two world powers that played a direct role in the American revolution (as well as foreign cultural influence), that of Great Britain and France. Great Britain was comprised of 230,977 square miles, and that’s including Ireland. France was comprised of 243,573 square miles. So America at the time was almost as vast as Great Britain and France combined. In terms of population, Great Britain had an estimated 8 million people and France an estimated 28 million people.

Some quick math then tells us that in 1776 there was around 5.8 people per square mile (today it is 34 people per square mile within all 50 states, which is quite a dramatic change considering Alaska’s vastness is included in that calculation). So America’s population density at its birth would be comparable to that of Mongolia today, which is the least dense of any country in the world. Ponder that. Wouldn’t this have a far reaching impact upon the details of how one would craft a government for such a land? Especially if one considers that the population density would change rapidly over the coming generations and in a manner that the crafters of the government could not foresee.

So okay, sure, Great Britain and France were considerably more populated than America. That probably is no newsflash, even if the extent of the ratio may be. However, there are some other consequential population stats we must be aware of. Namely how those populations, as well as the societal power they created, were diffused within each country. London, then as now, was the capital of Great Britain. It had 1.1 million people, making it the largest city on the planet. Its counterpoint to the east, Paris, had almost exactly half of that, making it the 6th largest city on the planet.

Considering that it was the culture America was born out of the difference between it and Great Britain is the most striking and important. London contained about 14% of the entire country’s population. For contrast, that would be as if New York City currently had over 44 million people as opposed to the 8.3 million people it currently contains. It also means that London itself had almost half the population of America in 1776 (and about as many people as there were voters in America). Cities in America were quite different when the first census of 1790 was taken; New York City – the largest – had 33,131 people, Philadelphia was just behind it with 28,542, and Boston came in third with 18,320. That meant that New York City comprised just 1% of America’s total population.

Those are staggering statistical differences that have real consequences. One can see that Great Britain most certainly centralized their power, but not just in their politics, in the physical mass and location of their people as well. Consider that in tandem to their much smaller land mass and centralization of power makes logical sense. This is also evidenced by the fact that Great Britain’s second largest city at the time was Manchester with a population of 90,000. It is no wonder that they centralized power when their society was literally centralized into one urban area.

Lessons from the revolution, the unique population diffusion, and the benefits of decentralizing power – especially militarily, as well as economically.

There are other very important factors to take in here. The US constitution was written in 1787, the revolutionary war began in earnest in 1775 and ended 8 long years later in 1783. For 4 years America existed under the Articles of Confederation before it became clear to the founders that a superior and more comprehensive governmental bedrock was required. Shamefully many Americans don’t even know these specifics and conflate the writing of the constitution and the year of 1776.

What’s important here is that the founders had already gone through the arduous and precarious Revolutionary War before a word of the constitution was written. It would be odd to assume that there weren’t any lessons gleamed from 13 years of battle, whether they be conscious or subconscious, that affected how they thought about framing the constitution they were constructing. Let’s take a look at some of the specifics of the war and what lessons might have been gleamed from them.

The British went after the population centers of America. Initially they took control of Boston and its harbor, until Washington was able to secretly procure cannon from Fort Ticonderoga and threaten the British Navy. General Howe, who was in charge of the British forces, didn’t want to risk his ships and felt that controlling Boston would not be worth what he would pay in casualties. The theory that capturing cities would be key to winning the war wasn’t altered though and Howe soon moved on to New York City.

Initially, at New York City, George Washington attempted to repel the British but was unsuccessful in Brooklyn and directed the army to make a somewhat miraculous nighttime escape (I suggest everyone to look into that, it’s one of many lucky wonders that Washington experienced in the war). Washington then wisely – but controversially – chose to give up the city to the British, which they would hold for the remainder of the war (that’s right, New York City was essentially British territory for the duration of the war). To add to that Howe soon after went on to capture Philadelphia, the de-facto capital of America (as that was where Congress was, although they escaped to Baltimore before Howe was able to arrive).

Great Britain, in the course of the war, captured with relative ease the 3 largest cities in the colonial land they aimed at subduing. Yet Washington grasped, as the rest of the founders would learn, that as long as the continental army existed the British could win battles but would remain without victory in the war. This must have infuriated the British. In 18th century European warfare if one country captures the opposing force’s capital city then the war was usually over (and in a way this would remain mostly true through WWII). This was not so in America, even though the capital and the 2 largest other cities had fallen, and fallen easily. Certainly Washington and his peers must have marveled at how they had switched the script on the British and their “rules” of warfare. There was a new and strange sort of American strength created out of the geographic decentralization of their people and therefor their power.

Side-note: The differences in where power rested between these two cultures reached beyond geography and military strategy and was evident in how power was distributed within society as well. American colonists on average had a higher income than his or her English counterpoint, until you reach the top 2%. That top echelon of English society owned and ran the society in a way that would be hard for Americans to relate to, then or now. As much as we like to talk about the founding fathers being the most privileged people in the land, their economic and societal domination in no way compared to their counterpoints across the Atlantic. This of course is best exemplified by the crown itself, in which inconceivable financial, societal and military powers were invested into the whims of a single person. The fact that this wildly unbalanced top-down power structure not only lead to many of the complaints that initiated the revolution in general, but also proved insufficient to beat the less funded, lesser trained and less populated military capacity of the Americans was something that intrigued the western world – including the founders who soon thereafter went on to craft the constitution.

What did this mean, in thought and in writing, for the specifics of the constitution?

When it became evident after the war that America’s federal government under the Articles of Confederation was vastly underpowered and a new system of government was required these lessons of the uniqueness of the American power dynamics must have been in the heads of the founders, whether they knew it or not. So, what could have been the result from this?

The most meaningful consequences were probably the compromises that were created within the constitution. Most of these were created to address the differences between the small and big states, which are known as the Sherman compromise (it is also known as the Connecticut Compromise and the Great Compromise of 1787).

Benjamin Franklin summed up the compromises as this; “If a proportional representation takes place, the small States contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint.”

The manner in which population proportions would be respected was central to the constitution, and the consequences of how this question would be answered were monumental. The Virginia Plan called for a different number of representatives in congress based upon population. The New Jersey plan on the other hand called for the same number of representatives in congress for each state. If this sounds like simple facts from your junior high social studies class you would be forgiven. In earnest though, the way that America’s geography, population diffusion and lessons learned from the war really deserve our close attention as we are living amongst the answers given to these questions to this day.

Many today assume that the population differences between regions at the time of the revolution had to be similar to that of today, or at least somewhat similar to the time of the Civil War. However, that is not the case. Virginia had a staggering 19.2% of the total US population, with Pennsylvania being second most populous with 11.2% and South Carolina being third at 10.1%. The northern states did not have more people than the south. In fact Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire collectively only had 11.3% of the population. Here we have to also recognize that slavery played an unfortunate part in the population statistics, as in 1787 40% of the people in the south were slaves, who were not considered citizens in any way, with a whopping 60% of people in Virginia alone being slaves (more on that later).
In fact, at that time, the south was growing more quickly than the north, and had the most land due to their western claims. So somewhat ironically it was the southerners who would be making the loudest demands for proportional representation in the legislature, something their descendants would eventually not be so much in favor of.

The most obvious way that the founders dealt with the population difference between large and small states through the Sherman compromise was in creating a bicameral legislature, meaning congress would have both a House and a Senate. The issue became so heated that the smaller states of the north even threatened to withdraw from the constitutional convention. Again, ironically, their descendants would probably regret their stance on this issue. And while this compromise can clearly be seen as one due to population differences it also can be seen as a compromise in the form of government, a compromise between becoming a Republic or becoming a Democracy.

Sidebar: In a pure Democracy the power is held by the population as a whole, where the voting majority has almost unlimited power to make and enforce laws, meaning that Rights can be overridden by the will of the Majority. In a Republic the power is held by individual citizens. Law creation and the power to enforce them are entrusted to elected representatives. However, the representatives are constrained by a constitution and the rights of all people are protected by a constitution and protected from the will of the majority. This is an important fact that is often lost upon us in the modern day. A Republic and a Democracy are not similar forms of government even though they both aim to govern through the will of the people. Americans often confusingly refer to their government as a Constitutional Democratic Republic, which isn’t false as it is clearly neither a pure Republic or Democracy. However, when looking at the constitution as it was when conceptualized, it seems to lean towards a Republic more than a Democracy in many important instances. There are many reasons this is so, but demographics and geography certainly played a central – often not discussed – role.

The legislature (the branch that formulates laws) was divided into the House, with the number of representatives reflecting population, and the Senate, with 2 representatives per state regardless of population. Thus, in the house each congressional district must have similar populations, with the idea being that no representative would then be inherited with more power than another. This meant that, in theory, a representative from a city wouldn’t gain an undue advantage over one from a rural area, nor would the size of land (specifically arable land, which was tied directly to economic power at the time) be reflected within the structure of the House as it was population that determined the size of their district.

On the other hand the Senate would receive two members from each state regardless of their population, size, or economic power. Additionally, there was another caveat that we often forget (or are never taught) these days as it was eventually changed, that the Senators from each state would not be elected by the people but by their state legislatures. This is a feature of a Republic not a pure Democracy, and was eventually done away with by the 17th Amendment (which surprisingly remains a contentious choice to this day). The idea was that this election procedure would be a bulwark against the federal government usurping too much power. The thinking being that it would be easy to replace a Senator if they started transferring power from the states to the federal government. They thought that the state legislators would have a better eye on what was best for the state – and prevent senators from “selling their vote” – as opposed to the people in general who might vote more whimsically based upon the national issues of the day. As Madison put it in Federalist Paper #62, “It is a misfortune incident to a republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust. In this point of view, a senate, as a second branch of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the government.”

In this way the senate would be republican (in that its members wouldn’t be directly elected by the people) and represent the interests of the states while the house would be democratic and represent the interests of the people. With this bicameral legislature the founders were effectively be guaranteeing that – in writing at least – large cities and large states would not be given undue power over small states and small population centers. They actively wished to not mirror Europe and avoid the pitfalls of having all power centralized into any one city. One can’t help but think that they saw the value of this type of decentralization in the war.

But they also learned another lesson about power distribution from the war, another one that isn’t talked about much these days, that the “snapshot” thoughts within the minds of the people were powerful – and often not in a good way. You have to remember that they were keenly aware that such viral thoughts could even lead to the people to starting and winning a revolutionary war against a superior military power. The founders may have been all for separating from Great Britain, but they certainly didn’t want another revolution against the government they were creating. They could also see that revolutions are made all the more probable when there isn’t a large pool of people to temper any kind of movement (the more minds you have to convince the harder it is) and when that small pool of people are distributed over a massive swath of land in which effective & quick communication was quite difficult.

This meant that the potential power of peoples’ thoughts in America was seen as harder to safely contain than it was in Europe. This awkward self knowledge had to have led to a fear of popular-thought-whims turning into general disorder or even potentially revolutions. The aversion of the dangers inherent within a democracy, the dangers of majority rule, directly contributed to many of the interesting arrangements within the bicameral legislature. We have to understand the founders’ belief that in America the minds of the uneducated voter would be more susceptible to being taken over by such whimsical ideas (sound familiar?), and that the goals of the ideas would be easier to actually implement due simply to the small and widely diffused population of the country. One is reminded of the quote that is attributed to Thomas Jefferson saying that, “an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” And while an educated citizenry is best, it cannot be guaranteed, so the founders created a buffer to the perils of majority rule through the framework of the government. Oh Jefferson, if you could only see us now!

Most importantly, this seems to show that the founders felt the government they were creating needed to be a republic more so than a democracy. This led to the Senate being imbibed with more power and responsibility than the house, it also led to the electoral college system used for deciding who wields the power of the executive branch. Senators serve for 6 years, longer than a President (in this way they aren’t under the sway of whoever holds the executive power, aren’t distracted by having to focus on their re-election, and are supposed to retain a more long-term & big picture approach to legislating) while House Members serve for 2 years and therefore have a more short-term, distracted, and influenced approach to legislating. It is clear to see that the Senate was seen as the buffer against trendy ideas within the House.

The Senate’s authority over the house doesn’t end there though. We should note that the Senate is also responsible for ratifying any treaty that the president agrees to sign. A treaty can supersede any previously signed bill and requires zero input from the House! The Senate alone also has the power of confirming any appointment of the President. The House was given no responsibility over these extremely important appointments. Interestingly, Senators also get paid more than House members and almost never subsequently decide to run for the House while the opposite happens all the time. But the significant aspect to ponder here is the constitution being written so as to give the superior powers to the members of congress who were not proportional to their states population and who (originally) were voted in by a state’s legislature and of a state.

The founder’s respect – and outright phobia – of the “whims” of its decentralized, wide spread, sparse population also plays into the creation of the electoral college. It would not be one-person-one-vote that would decide who was president, instead they wanted a filter so as to again dodge the dangers of a pure democracy. This was to temper the “passions of the crowd”. This was especially true because the founders – with good reason – just didn’t believe people in far off rural areas could be well informed of their choices and needed the intermediary of educated electors who would take into account the vote of their constituents but wouldn’t be beholden to them. We can fight about the contemporary legitimacy of this system, but with the population diffusion and large geography of the country at the time this decision made some sense. However, it also then led (unfortunately) to most states adopting winner take all voting system for their electors, which states did to give themselves more power within an election, even if in the end a 99% vote for someone would be just as powerful as 50.1%. This is a decision that we’ve had to painfully deal with a couple times in recent memory as people have won the presidency through the electoral college while receiving substantially fewer votes overall.

Side-note: You have to remember that there were also no political parties when the constitution was created and that it was assumed electors would vote closer to their individual choice as opposed to any dictates from a state or national party. Because of this it was decided that if no single candidate wins a majority of the electoral college the election would go to the house, where each state gets one vote. That’s borderline weird-as-hell. Especially when you consider that the founders actually thought this would happen quite often. When in actuality it has only happened twice, the last time in 1824. This system also would diminish the chance of a runoff election or some kind of confusing and painful national recount. Again, this system was incredibly unique in the world then as it is now. Having electors and not the people decide, and having a one-state-one-vote backup plan, gives a huge amount of power to the “elite”, well informed people. In a way though this also shows an odd kind of respect for a state’s land as opposed to its population, as long as that land was deemed a state it got a vote in this process regardless of how many people it contained within its borders.

This is a clear attempt to counter any type of democratic mob, which would be hard to control in America at the time as it wouldn’t be centralized due to its expansive geography and unusual population diffusion. Think about it, for purely logistical reasons, if there was an issue with such a mob in Great Britain all you would have to do is subdue its spread and reach within London and you’ve basically nipped it in the bud for the whole country. Not so in America, and we saw that clearly in the Revolutionary War.

Of course another horrible consequence of how the founders dealt with their unique population and geography issue, specifically within the House and Electoral College, was the three-fifths compromise. This was one issue that was clearly southern states vs northern states. Southern slave holding states wanted slaves counted in censuses, giving them more power in the house and electoral college while northern free states didn’t want people who couldn’t vote and were (awfully so) treated as property in all other legal instances to be counted and added to the ledger that would decide the level of representation a state would possess. The resulting compromise was that slaves would be counted as 3/5ths a person. This regretful compromise was made to ensure that Southern states even considered ratifying the constitution at all! This also, at that time, gave Virginia a quarter of all electoral votes required to win the presidency (hence why so many of the first presidents were Virginians).

The differences were not limited to the number of citizens or the geographic size of the states, it also had to do with finances, taxes more specifically. At this time the idea of a federal income tax was a long way off, instead the states contributed to the federal government with local taxes, which were often a flat poll tax on each citizen (a poll tax is a tax levied on each adult without reference to income or resources). Many delegates argued that geographic size or amount of arable farmland would be a better indicator of due taxes from a state than its mere population. In the end though they went with a proportional contribution based on population – and by extension – the amount of members they had in the House of representatives. In this way large states with a high population would contribute more revenue to the federal government but would also have more representation in the legislature. This was how they addressed taxation without representation, one of the key concerns that led to the revolutionary war in the first place.

The effects and importance today of these compromises.

America today has over 330 million people and spans from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond. Unlike the majority of countries we are not held together through our history by any sort of ethnic roots, not by a language unique to us, nor by any sort of long lived societal norms and traditions. In fact, nothing in America is very long lived seeing that we are a relatively young civilization in constant flux. And while the specifics changes over time and in political popularity, we are a nation of immigrants from countries the world over.

The ballast of the American ship is the constitution, for better for worse. It is a concept and a symbolic guiding light and the societal glue, in addition to a body of fundamental principles and established legal precedents. And while we are a young civilization we are paradoxically the oldest country with a continuously used written constitution on the planet (save for San Marino, a small city state in Italy) . To say that the constitution plays an important role in our lives and actively affects every single citizen would be obvious to a silly degree. And despite it’s glaring flaws that we can see in hindsight, it’s been successful in that it has survived and been the backbone of a generally successful society (even if our ever present growing pains are substantial).

But that constitution, that was created in the 18th century when the human experience was disparately different than today, was obviously greatly influenced by the reality of America at that time. It was a small country by population but a large one geographically, with inherently decentralized power structures. These interesting and unique situations, which are quite unlike any country today, have their finger on the structure of American society in ways that most people do not realize. It is important to understand this when questioning why things are the way they are.

Conclusion

All counties change over time. All countries peer backwards into their past to understand their present. Controlling the narrative of the past controls the narrative of the present. This reality presents itself clearly in countries with autocratic rule, where the realities of the past are often changed or just not told (China comes to mind, where the true story of Mao and the 40 something million that died on way to him gaining power isn’t well known or taught).

In America our birth story is well known and taught. We may argue over the correct interpretations, but facts are not routinely shielded into oblivion nor is it illegal or punishable to challenge the narrative. Yet, for whatever reason, the realities surrounding the incredibly unique population and geography situation for a country undergoing a successful revolution are not factored into most minds when they contemplate the framing of the constitution and how that effects their lives. Just knowing that there was only around 1 million potential “voters” in America when the Declaration Of Independence was written should rattle one’s mind!

Today we love to look into the decisions of the founders and extract so much from them, as we attempt to pull out their intentions and the real “whys” behind their decisions. Sometimes we forget to just look at the most basic of facts of their surroundings and the bedrock facts of the society they inhabited. At the end of the day they were just a few people, in an odd brand new expansive country, trying to create a system that wouldn’t eat itself the best they knew how. That influenced their “whys” just as much as anything else and we do them, and ourselves, a disservice by forgetting this.

All in all one would have to say that without knowing how much the demographics of America would change, and how powerful and influential the constitution and country they were forming would be the world over, the founders were successful in crafting an amazing – and probably unrivaled – constitution. It has survived. The country has prospered in a manner unlike any other. Darwin would have to say that among the natural selection of governmental systems, it has done well in its struggle for existence. That fact – with our myriad problems nonetheless – is hard to argue.

Especially since the founders gave as an evolutionary advantage, one that was intended to be used to address changes in our demographics and changing realities of history; constitutional amendments. After seeing how implausibly different America was in 1787 through time until now, it seems that maybe this evolutionary advantage should be taken advantage of more so. Amendments were intended to be manner in which we adapted with the times. It is our pressure release valve. It is our way to continually strive to be the nation we want to be. That was of course the idea behind their creation in the first place. It is the tool that originalists and progressives both can be happy using. That is rare. That is wonderful. Americans of different political opinions have more in common than they care to admit. We certainly have more in common with each other than with those in 1787, individually and in the structure/demographics of the country as a .

Only upon fully understanding the great expanse of differences the American constitution has bridged does its ingenuity really present itself.

– It is hoped that reading this was found to be interesting and intriguing. Thank you for taking the time to read it. –

An addendum: A subjective look at some of the potential mistakes made by the founders, mistakes that even within the peculiarity of their time they should have better be able to see.

It is probably helpful to examine – with all the insights of hindsight – a few of the decisions surrounding the creation of the government that precipitated from the realities of America’s small population, large geography, and lessons from the revolutionary war that probably could have been handled in a better way. There are more than what’s said here, no doubt, but let this be a jumping off point for one’s own thoughts. Of course the personal opinion of the author comes into play here as that can’t be avoided when questioning if a decision was in error or not. This part is naturally subjective and speculative.

It seems that having a bicameral legislature was a sound decision. Having just a House or a Senate would not be adequate or stable through time. Having solely an equal number representatives per state, having representatives purely based upon population, or having representatives being responsible to take either a short term or long term view on legislating would be unbalanced and prove too troublesome. There is a lasting balance and stability given to congress in this decision. However, the decision to have the Senate be the higher chamber seems questionable. The founders couldn’t predict how the country’s population will be diffused within the states over time, that’s understandable. They couldn’t predict that a far away state on the shores of the pacific called California would one day have 40 million people and – if it were a country – the 5th largest economy in the world. In this respect California and Montana having the same number of Senators just doesn’t feel right in the slightest. But that isn’t horribly different than the differences between Virginia and the smaller states during the constitution’s writing, meaning that claiming that the founders couldn’t have possibly seen this reality coming is false. Assuming – correctly so – that the government is better off with one chamber not being directly reflective of states’ populations, there is no way you can avoid these power differences between states, especially over generations.

If you live in Montana your vote for senator is more powerful than someone from California, there is no way around that. In a way a Montanan wields more influence upon the lives of Californians than they do for themselves purely because of their address. What could have been avoided is granting the Senate more power than the House. The founder’s desire to build a bulwark against the whims of the people, to lean heavily towards a Republic through endowing the educated and well off with seats in the Senate (which is who they saw as those who would serve there), because of what they felt as the precarious nature of America’s small and spread out populous went a little too far. It’s necessary to remember that there were just over 1 million people eligible to vote when the constitution was written, spread out far and wide. A fear of radical ideas spreading virally within the voting populous was understandable, because the number of minds that have to “be infected” before there is trouble is low (if Jan 6th happens then, the government surely falls). But a little planning for the eventual growth of the voting bloc, and respect for the people’s power – for better for worse – would have been helpful in this instance. I can’t help but feel that a little more faith in Democracy would have paid off.

To have had more trust in the people at large would have been to make the House the upper chamber. A vote for senator in Montana would still be more powerful than a vote in California, but this would have been slightly offset by the fact that the House mattered more. The consequences of this reality are too numerous to list here, but some obvious examples such as placing such importance – and helpful funding/subsidies – on the wishes of those in the coal industry in West Virginia or the corn farmers of Iowa come to mind. Making the House the upper chamber could only help to offset the undue influence of these interests that stemmed from small population thinking. It wouldn’t fix it, this issue isn’t exclusive to the Senate. But it would help.

Another consequence of the founder’s fear of their tiny, spread out voting population and the resulting trust in/power given to the elite intermediaries who would represent them is that the trust and power can easily become too much. The people in power will not always be the best and brightest among us, even if it seemed so at the time. The founders certainly planned for this scenario, and feared it very much, creating the system of checks and balances just for this reason. But the checks and balances are within the branches of government – of among those already in places of power. Having a way that the feelings of the majority of people can be reflected outside of just electing someone else into the system would be helpful. The options of what this mechanism would look like are various and debating them would be a long paper on its own, but some manner would be helpful. When most people in the country agree on something, especially when that agreement crosses party lines, it should matter more than it currently does. An examples of a situation like this is that currently 91% of Americans believing marijuana should be federally legal for medical or recreational use. That should change the laws and change them quickly, yet due to many issues (lobbying chief among them) these laws don’t change. There should be a manner for the will of the people to influence the government in situations such as this. The founders, in part due to the aforementioned demographic issues and fears, didn’t build this into the system.

Side note: Interestingly, for constitutional amendments, the founders actually called for the ability of a national convention, called by Congress for this purpose, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states (34 since 1959) to be able to create an amendment. This option has never once been used!

One amendment that could be called for that I believe could be more viable than doing away with the electoral college would be one that abolished states having a winner take all system for their electors. The fact is that this system guarantees that we lose voters every four years, on the issue of the presidency but also anything else on the ballot, and don’t actually know the true will of the people when the election outcome of a large number of states is felt to be known by the public prior to the election actually happening. It’s hard to think that we wouldn’t be a better democratic republic if the winner take all system was gotten rid of, and if all states voted in the manner that Nebraska and Maine do currently, where they apportion votes based on district specific performance.

While the founders put in place a way for the government to work without trust between the branches, there was too much trust in the idea that most of the people elected would always act honorably and act in a way that reflects the needs and desires of their people. This misplaced trust also applies to the incredibly important unelected people put into positions of power in our government. It has to be remember that a vast amount of power is given to unelected people within the government, such as the many in the defense department who possess access to the information in the numerous security levelsabove the President.

This trust of the founders maybe made sense in their sparsely populated world, where it seemed the cream of the crop would be those who decided to run for office. But even then they should have known this doesn’t necessarily hold up to the pressures of time and growth, and they only had to look to their European counter points for examples of this issue. It is okay to lean heavily towards being a republic, or basically just be one. But without building in some sort of decent democratic check on the representatives of the republic itself we often find those in government just not being respectable people. In fact, nowadays, many people ask “who even wants that job?”. The unfortunate answer is often someone seeking power, financial success, attention or all three. One could say then that impeachment (and actual removal) should be used more often, as was probably intended by many of the founders. Sadly though this mechanism isn’t enough and another – more democratic manner that directly reflects the will of the people – would have been helpful. Again, this is one that should have been obvious at the time and didn’t require time and change to reveal itself.

Admittedly, this is a dangerous idea in many ways. Especially when it is confined to laws within a state. The civil rights movement, for example, might never have happened if the opinion of the majority was the deciding factor (hence, LBJ and the Democratic party paid a heavy political cost for this). And yet – as previously discussed – there are times when the reverse is true, when the majority of the people want something and it falls upon deaf political ears, to the detriment of all.

A clear manner of rectifying this is not readily apparent. Apologies to anyone reading this and thinking it is pointless to point out the problem without a solution. But I disagree, pointing it out is necessary. Maybe it could be a public referendum that when it reaches a certain level must be discussed and voted upon by congress. Very possibly there are other better ways. But what does seem true was that the realities of America in 1787 led to the founders creating a republic with checks and balances within the government but without a way for the people to directly check and balance that republic, outside of just electing other people into the system. The fear here is that the people will eventually become so incensed at their lack of representation that they will turn to electing people with the direct aim of destabilizing the entire structure (see Donald Trump), or they will turn to extra-governmental means of expressing themselves (see the French Revolution).

One can’t help but feel that the founder’s rejection of centralized power also played into the creation of Washington D.C., which was a great idea in most respects but a mistake in other key ways. It was a city created out of thin air, not placed within any state, located in an area designed to quell geographic tension as opposed to reflecting any natural trade or geographic advantage, with the aims of it’s citizens living there to support the functions of the government. This was unlike any another capital city on earth, and quite on purpose. Yet the unfortunate – and oddly “un American” – consequence of this is that the citizens of D.C. are not represented in congress like they would be in any other state. This is true even though the city has a higher population than the entire states of Vermont and Wyoming. This is more food for thought than anything else, as an example of the unintended long term consequences of the founder’s reactions to the realities and desires of their day.

Another mistake, the mistake, from the founders was the 3/5ths compromise on slavery. Of course, slavery shouldn’t have been carried over into the creation of America at all. Other countries have shown there existed peaceful ways of eradicating this evil practice, and while the founders were okay being revolutionary in a multitude of ways they should have tried to seize the moment in some way. That was the great sin of the constitutional convention. But even if you allow that at the time that couldn’t have been done as there wouldn’t have then even been a United States if the free states – arguing from a population disadvantage – would have insisted upon this, that doesn’t excuse this compromise. Why would you allow for slaves to be counted at all when it comes to deciding the number of representatives a state would receive, when their owners cruelly treated them as property and not as fellow humans in all other respects?! Allowing the disgraceful practice to continue on unimpeded was compromise enough, giving the slave holding states an undue voting advantage in addition to this just doesn’t make any sense – even from an unemotional political point of view. The free states should have drawn that line at this point, and called the slave state’s bluff (which I feel it was at this point, allowing that the institution of slavery itself was to continue). One can’t help but imagine how American history might have unfolded had the southern states had the appropriate voting power, especially as the northern states quickly became the most populous in the generations to come. Maybe this original sin could have been purged politically as opposed to through the massive shedding of blood in the Civil War. Of course, warfare was probably always in the cards, such was the depths of this sin that only violent force could budge it towards death. Maybe America had to wait until the population and economic realities shifted. But one can’t help but wonder…

Remedial Polymath

Ep 1. The Effects of The Wild Demography of America in 1776 On The War & The Constitution

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