Rousseau and the "Federalist Papers"

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the European theorists who has been cited as an inspiration for the Founding Fathers as they wrote the U.S. Constitution and created the American form of government. The paper shows that in some ways, however, they were using what Rousseau wrote as a beginning point and then finding a governmental form to refute some of Rousseau's concerns for what representative government might become if not controlled. The paper describes how the authors of "The Federalist Papers" ( Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay) answered certain of these concerns, especially regarding concerns about factions and the effect of differences of opinion on the sovereign.

From the Paper:

"The Constitution that was ratified in 1787 promoted the ideal of equality, but in fact its provisions were not at first applied equally to all the people. Women could not vote, for instance, and being unable to vote means being less than a full citizen. The nation still had slaves, and they were counted as three-fifths of a person in the Constitution. More fundamentally, the Constitution was designed by and for the interests of property owners more than other citizens, and they were given more rights because they owned property. "

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