I Would Like to Talk (Civilly) About the Generalization of "White People"

[BmorePat87]

(09-29-2016, 01:48 AM)Shake n Blake Wrote: Did the UK have city/state/federal government's? Heck, they were still ruled by royalty when we broke off from them. I'd say there was quite of bit of difference eventually, and I'm sure there was much to sort out for a brand new country. It's honestly ignorant to think otherwise.

And like I said, 80 years wasn't a long time in the grand scope of things. Especially for a new country that was still adding states and sorting out many things. Taxation, this new thing called "freedom", a system of government that had major differences, etc etc. Eventually, slavery was handled. It didn't take very long.

We essentially rolled the colonial governments into state governments. The same colonial governments that were following English common law. The crown honestly wasn't as involved as people would make it out to be. Our first few years was under the Articles of Confederation and the central government was nearly powerless, so it was just the states running themselves, just as the colonies were running themselves for the most part prior. We had a President of Congress in the same sense that Parliament had a Prime Minister during those days. 

We borrowed almost all of our ideas from English and French philosophers and preexisting English documents. As Bigzoman said, a lot of these limits on government and concepts of popular sovereignty and consent of the govern had been around for a while. The big difference was having a "democratically" elected President over a King, but even England had a period of time when they removed the King and attempted to have a legislative body in power.

The Constitution brought differences in our system (federal over confederacy), requiring us to add an executive branch and a judicial branch, but they were much smaller in scope then than they are now. 

If you look at a timeline of when other nations abolished slavery, it is a big deal. Nations were forming after we did in the Americas and were instantly abolishing slavery. We weren't even one of the first 10 in the Americas. Not even one of the first 25 in the world. It took a long time. That's like suggesting the 80 years between the end of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement wasn't a long time. 80 years of citizens being denied rights.