The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Founding Fathers and the Birth of Our Nation
Ray Raphael
Language: English
Pages: 303
ISBN: 2:00339566
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Essential reading for anyone interested in the leaders who shaped our nation.
Popular interest in the Founding Fathers has surged over the past decade and is beginning to rival interest in the Civil War. People are increasingly looking back to the generation that invented this country's political ideas and institutions for help in today's complex political world.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Founding Fathers presents the Founding Fathers through the issues that defined them-issues that are with the country today.
At 4 A.M. on the day of inauguration, he boarded a stage and left town. He did not want to honor the new Republican president. The Least You Need to Know • In the election of 1800, Federalists put forth John Adams and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Republicans countered with Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, and both sides, believing the fate of the nation was at stake, vilified the opponents. • With the people voting directly for electors in only 5 of the 16 states, and with most states firmly
important protection: “That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The full Convention then added the right to a “well-regulated militia” and the subordination of standing armies to “civil power.” This Declaration of Rights served as a preamble to Virginia’s new constitution, and several states copied parts verbatim (see Chapter 16). The body of the work started with a basic premise that became a model for other states:
both with proportional representation. The old rule—one state, one vote—would suffice. FOUNDER ID William Paterson (1745-1806). Secretary, New Jersey Provincial Congress, 1775-1776. New Jersey Attorney General, 1776-1783. Constitutional Convention, 1787. United States Senator from New Jersey, 1789-1790. Governor of New Jersey, 1790-1793. Associate Justice United States Supreme Court, 1793-1806. Educated at Princeton, Paterson had his state’s interests at heart. During the Revolutionary years,
remained the same. All bills of any sort needed the approval of both houses before becoming law. But some powers, as Franklin had observed, seemed more appropriate to one chamber or the other. The House, composed of the people’s direct representatives, should take the lead in taxation. This followed from the idea of “no taxation without representation,” so pivotal in the nation’s break from Britain. Meanwhile, the Senate exercised significant powers of its own, unrelated to legislation. It could
justice was not separated from the executive authority; it was just the reverse, with judges directly influenced by a king or his appointed colonial governors. Revolutionaries changed that when they wrote new state constitutions and established separate judicial branches, making judges responsible to the people. States were now free of Britain and on their own, and state legislatures busily attempted to pass laws that would cover any and every circumstance that might arise. In this new order,