Well, I just wrote it, and I went a tiny bit over the time limit (it took about 50 minutes) but nobody knows, right?

So the prompt was "The Constitution, as ratified, represented a major defeat for those who wished for greater democracy in the young American nation." Assess the validity of this statement.

I'd love if somebody wanted to comment on what I could do to make it better/be a better DBQ writer in general.

Okay, here it is:

_______________________________________________________________

Democracy is defined as the rule of the majority, “wherein the people retain all their rights securely” as Patrick Henry put it. As ratified, the Constitution did represented a defeat for those who wanted greater democracy the American nation. However, the severity of that defeat is debated. The women and slaves and the common people suffered in a democratic loss, but the Bill of Rights that amended the Constitution and was ratified along with it protected that which was in the best interests of democracy.

In the first works towards a governmental system, set up by the Articles of Confederation, there was a more democratic administration; specifically towards the women and slaves. Therefore, the Constitution was a step towards a less democratic rule. “All men are created equal,” the Declaration of Independence states, and “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Within the Articles of Confederation, there is no statement of law or policy keeping any man, woman, or slave from those rights. However, in the second section of the first article in the Constitution, slaves are stated as being “three fifths” of a person in the population. Voting rights were not given to women or slaves when the Constitution was ratified, and women even had to wait for that right until the nineteenth amendment. By way of these exclusions, the Constitution was a defeat for those wishing for a greater democracy in the young American nation.

Similarly, the common people were not taken care of by the Constitution. The drafting of the Constitution was made by, as Jonathan Elliot puts it, “lawyers and men of learning, and moneyed men” who “expect to be the managers of this Constitution, an get all the power and all the money into their own hands. And then they will shallow up all of us little folk.” These aristocratic Federalists were not the common people, and thus were not representatives of their cause. The fact that about half of the population of the colonies at that time were Anti-Federalist and a smaller portion of the colonies evenly divided, shows that the document was drafted not by majority rule. The Declaration of Independence says that “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.” Yet, clearly, the majority did not follow the philosophies of the Federalists. Patrick Henry asked, “Who authorized them to speak the language of, We the people, instead of We, the states?” And Paul S. Boyer showed that the Constitution created what appeared to be a “executive authority...vested in a single magistrate,” the president, showing a “resemblance to the King of Great-Britain.” In this way, the common people were not represented in the ratified Constitution, and thus democracy was undermined in that way.

Yet, to call the ratified Constitution a “major defeat” for the champions of greater democracy might be a stretch. For, with all the defeats, the Constitution provided a Bill of Rights, and in this way created for all the people the confirmation of their rights. The eight amendment gives the states the rights that the Federal Power does not have, much like the second article of the Articles of Confederation. In the first amendments, the peoples' rights of action are protected, such as speech, religion, congregation, the right to bear arms and have a trail by jury, and other rights that maintain justice in a democratic society. In the rest of the Constitution there too are passages with maintain democracy. The Representations of the states give some voice to the people, as article one, section two of the Constitution dictates. Article one, section seven of the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the right to make any policies regarding monetary issues, and in this way the democracy of the people is preserved. Even Benjamin Franklin observed that, “It astonishes me...to find this system [the Constitution] approaching so near to perfection as it does.”

The statement, “The Constitution, as ratified, represented a major defeat for those who wished for greater democracy in the young American nation,” is to some extent true. There was a loss in democracy because of the ratification of the Constitution. Nevertheless, the extent to which it was a “major defeat” can be lessened by the upholding of some democratic principles in the Bill of Rights and Constitution.