Constitutional Rights

The ‘democratic spirit’ which had been the rallying cry of the settlers in their fight for independence in the 1770s, came to define the identity of the USA against the monarchies and aristocracies of the Old World. Also important to them was that their constitution included the individual’s ‘right to property’, which the state could not override. But both democratic rights (the right to vote for representatives to Congress and for the President) and the right to property were only for white men. Daniel Paul, a Canadian native, pointed out in that Thomas Paine, the champion of democracy at the time of the War for American Independence and the French Revolution, ‘used the Indians as models of how society might be organized’.

He used this to argue that ‘the Native Americans by their example sowed the seeds for the long-drawn-out movement towards democracy by the people of Europe’