I can't believe we've only been in New York for seven days! I feel like we've done so much and have been here for longer. Nonetheless, we have a lot more days to go.
Today we had our first real class with Dr. Z. We discussed what the Founding Fathers thought of the Presidency during the time of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation and Constitution. It's strange that the main source of the colonists' problems initially was Parliament's enforcement of things like taxes but later the Articles and the Constitution gave most of the power of government to Congress. We also noted that with the failure of the Articles, the United States realized they needed a strong leader who all states could unite under and that became apparent in the Constitution. I'm really excited to discuss more tomorrow!
Here's Butler Library
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteEven though England had a Parliament which was made up of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, regular people still had very little say in how England and Great Britain were run. The power was still in the hands of the King and, to a lesser extent, the House of Lords. The right of the regular man to vote for who represented him in the House of Commons was limited and restricted with the same types of restrictions our Founding Fathers put into our own rules: land ownership, color, gender, poll taxes, value of assets, etc.
Even today, after more than 200 years, we're still working on giving the right to vote to all of our citizens.