Essay On Republicanism

When Thomas Jefferson and the founders were framing the newly formed nation they saw a very different direction of what the United States was to become. For the founders, republicanism was deeply rooted on the principle of "the people" sovereignty and not the abusive aristocratic monarchy used in colonial times. However, with social and economic changes republicanism slowly morphed into an idea that was to modernize with the changing American rhetoric. This sudden change in Republicanism would shift the way of political thinking that would have a profound effect on the everyday life of the American individual. This republican thinking would thus create a time in the American political system with intense political preferences, westward expansion, …show more content…
Shipping in the north soon developed into a vast trading network between the new and old world. Developments in the north would led to the growth of industrialism. However, with economic growth came a new structure which overran the outdated system of the founders. “Economic growth led to new demands on their government that the old structure could barely satisfy”(Watson 8). The system developed under the founders was slowly deteriorating into one which abandoned the principles of republicanism and fell into one of greed and extortion. “Class lines fell lightly over the contours of an essentially fluid society” (Bruchey 218). This new economic system shifted rough into a new order often eerie in the early republic. The long-established system of apprentice and master slowly developed into one of manager and worker, of master and slave. Americans were abandoning the ways of colonial self-sustaining and liberty to a system of control. In this time Americans were becoming more reliant on wage work and less on self-sufficiency and as an effect. The new nation 's system of republicanism was holding on by a mere thread and was even more fluent in the south which was going through some growing pains as