United States Form of Government

If we approach the History of the United States of America from the perspective of forms of government, first we can trace its beginnings to the year of the foundation of Jamestown in Virginia (1607). It is true that the colonies of North America came from many European countries and not only from England. There were colonies from France, Spain and the Netherlands. But what later became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is, on the aggregate, the form of government of the colonial times in what later became the United States. So we can plausibly proceed from the general assumption that the United States emerged as an independent free republic from the Monarchy of Great Britain, and from nowhere else.

What later became the free republic of the United States was first under a monarchical constitution; and the monarchs can be listed as follows:
1) King James I, 1607-1625 (from the foundation of Jamestown);
2) King Charles I, 1625-1649;
3) King Charles II, 1649-1685;
4) King James II, 1685-1688;
5) King William III, 1689-1702;
6) Queen Anne, 1702-1714;
7) King George I, 1714-1727;
8) King George II, 1727-1760;
9) King George III, 1760-1776 (until the Declaration of Independence).

The Declaration of Independence marks the overthrow of the monarchy and the constitution of a free republic: The United States of America under The Articles of Confederation. The final establishment of the republic came under the ratification of the United States Constitution (1789), and the inauguration of its first Congress and President. However, what could have been a free republic, came more in the form of an oligarchical constitution. Most of the Union had by that time property qualifications for voting right. That is common ground in the institutions of oligarchy since the political philosophy of Aristotle.

The prudence of the Founding Fathers was their capacity to understand the limits of their victory. A complete democratic revolution in 1776 (that of course would have included the African American population) would have caused civil war and total division, making the republican project a complete failure, and would have resulted in a dictatorship, most probably of George Washington, the strong man of the time. It happened in France after a so radical democratic revolution that began in 1789, that resulted in Bonaparte's dictatorship under the name of Emperor (The mirror revolution of 1848 also ended with another dictatorship by a Bonaparte). In Russia, the radicalism of the revolution of 1917 brought about a civil war and eventually Stalin's dictatorship under the name of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Not to go far from Anglophone experience, the English republicanist revolution of 1649 executed King Charles I, and its religious and political radicalism resulted in Cromwell's dictatorship under the name of Lord Protector. History of Hispanic American republics is filled with examples of the same phenomenon. What made the Founding Fathers so successful was their prudence to administer their victory according to the possibilities of the times. Hence, the first decades of the United States were more similar to an oligarchical constitution, with slavery included.

The impressive nature of the United States Constitution is its ability to adapt and evolve through time. No wonder why they call it a "living constitution". After the generation of the Founding Fathers finished their administrations in the White House and Congress, the next generation of politicians took charge. By the times of the revolutionary war, Clay, Calhoun, Quincy Adams and Jackson were children or unborn. When they took charge of the country, the next step in American Democracy took place: Jacksonian Democracy and the end of property qualifications made the United States a white male democratic republic. Lincoln was a mere teenager. When his republican movement (the generation after the Jacksonian, the founders of the GOP) took charge, they defeated the most dangerous rebellion against the Constitution, ended slavery and moved forward toward universal male democracy. Women had to wait till the 19th Amendment (1920) that ended the long road toward universal suffrage, the peak of Modern Democracy. However true republicanism, equal protection of the law, came during the 60's with the Civil Rights Movement.

My point is, just as in Rome, the United States began its history under a monarchical form of government, and through the abolition of that constitution it advanced toward a republic. First it came in the form of an oligarchy and later, with constant civil action, it democratized itself slowly. Also as in Rome, the United States has never turned into a full time generalized democracy, and nothing similar to it. It has preserved republican principles of mixed government that do not deny the elites their space for ruling, nor excludes the people from some engagement in political power, and always holding the creed that the law is the only legitimate way of making any reform.

The question now goes, is the United States heading on the same road that led Rome to universal empire and ultimately to slavery?