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Founders expected flawed people
Two traditions meet
Two traditions met in the colonies. An optimistic, Enlightened view of society and human beings fused with a Calvinist religious culture that was pessimistic about human nature. Just a generation earlier, Americans had probably been the most religious society in the world, coming off the Great Awakening. The mix produced the conviction that the world could be made anew but never made perfect.
How founders saw each other
That outlook shows in how the founders talked about each other. Washington came to be seen almost as a god, and they still knew his flaws and what he struggled with. Madison wrote that if men were angels, no government would be necessary, and that people are neither completely angels nor completely devils.
Accepting unwanted results
Because they could not lie to themselves about human nature, they could accept results they disliked. Jefferson and Madison held a high Enlightenment vision of a yeoman, agrarian republic. The culture that emerged in the 1820s looked quite different, and they were forced to come to terms with it. The Revolution did not consume itself, and it did not slide into the conceit and falsehoods that other revolutions did.
How did Calvinism shape American political thought?
Calvinist teaching held that every person is born with a tendency toward sin, a doctrine often called total depravity. Applied to politics, it made Americans suspicious of anyone holding concentrated power. John Adams, raised in Congregationalist Massachusetts, carried that suspicion into his writing on government. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, which he largely drafted, split power among three branches.
Why did the French Revolution turn so bloody?
French revolutionaries set out to remake society around civic virtue, and Maximilien Robespierre argued in 1794 that terror was an outgrowth of virtue in a time of crisis. The Committee of Public Safety he sat on ran the Reign of Terror from 1793 to 1794. Historian Donald Greer's 1935 count found roughly 17,000 death sentences from the revolutionary tribunals in that period. The Revolution ended with Napoleon's seizure of power in 1799.
How does separation of powers assume flawed rulers?
Montesquieu argued in The Spirit of the Laws in 1748 that anyone given power is tempted to abuse it, so power must be checked by power. The framers built the Constitution on that premise by dividing authority among a legislature, an executive, and courts. Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51 that ambition must be made to counteract ambition. That essay appeared in 1788.
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