In line with Jefferson's ideals, Thomas Paine's Common Sense is a
compelling political document from the time, as in its grievances against
the tyranny of the British throne, it seems almost to anticipate the
implications of an empowered American governance. He deduces that "society
is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former
promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter
negatively by restraining our voices. The one encourages intercourse, the
other creates distinctions." (Hoffman et al, 2001) Quite to the point,
even before America's freedom from imperial oversight, Paine demonstrates
an awareness of the forces that will ultimately come to intervene with the
premise of the Declaration. For the disenfranchised groups that direct our
gaze in this discussion, there is an inherency to the idea that America's
government, reflexive of a hegemonic political group, will ultimately
undermine its social broadness. This would, in 1877, certainly be
illustrated as such. Recently freed blacks continued to suffer an
outrageous lot of segregation, concurrent with Paine's idea of
'distinctions,' as would Native Americans be increasingly isolated in
grossly unequal reservations. More to the point, the grievances concerning
representation...
In the Federalist Papers, as James Madison argues as one
speaker under the shared nom de plume, Publius, in commenting on groups
rising in protest of the government that "the friend of popular governments
never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he
contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice." (Hoffman, 2001)
Identifying popular objection to policy or ideology as a threat to the
solidarity of the newly formulating nation, Madison represents here the
over-arching impetus of The Federalist Papers. These are designed to
accord the government with a protection of power but would also come to
imply an entitltment that would be used to restrain the progress or
equality of certain groups. The economic and cultural motives which had
long driven the type of oppression to which blacks, Native Americans and
women all were subjected seemed to underscore
