19th Century American Democracy Assignment

America has been labelled a democracy ever since it gained its independence from England. However, early America and it population were not very democratic at all. A democracy can be defined as a government that is ruled by the people, where the majority are able to decide what are the right and wrong courses of action for their country. In America, the citizens demonstrated this power by voting for which person would represent their interests in the government. The only problem being that, at the time, the way these people were elected were not exactly democratic. For one thing, not every member of the population was allowed to vote for their representatives. In the early 19th century, a voter must be a white man who also must own a minimum amount of land to be allowed to vote. This rules out women, the poor and other races entirely from voting. This would completely rule out America from being a democratic system of government. However, as the century wore on conditions began to change and many of the voting restrictions were lifted. The tax that kept the poor from voting was either lifted or lowered and more and more states allowed the people to vote for who they wanted to rule over them. Also, all men were soon allowed to vote regardless of their income thanks to the Dorr wars which led to states adopting new laws on who was allowed to vote. However, women were still not allowed to vote which makes it hard for this period of America to be called a democracy. From these points historians are able to draw a conclusion that America at the beginning of the 19th century was certainly not a democracy, but as the century wore on, more and more democratic laws and regulations were passed so as to create a system of government fairly close to a democracy.

picture link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_election_campaigns_in_the_19th_century