Foundations of American Democracy

American democracy is an argument that started before the Constitution was signed and has never stopped. The founding generation disagreed sharply about whether a strong central government would protect liberty or destroy it, and the documents they produced, including Federalist 51, Brutus No. 1, and the Bill of Rights, record that argument in permanent form. Your job here is to learn those nine required documents not as historical artifacts but as claims about power, rights, and who should be trusted with both. The Articles of Confederation failed because it underestimated what coordinated government power actually requires, and the Constitution's structure, separation of powers, federalism, and checks and balances, is the direct answer to that failure. Every institutional mechanic you study in Units 2 through 5 is an attempt to make the Framers' theory work in practice.

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