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They came out of an English tradition that didn't have much rebellion and where the king was by habit used to compromising with the people. The original founders were educated, idealistic men who tried to limit the franchise to people like themselves, and thus you had a succession of early presidents from this mold which laid the model for a peaceful transition in power. A two party system developed in which one or both parties usually quickly adopted the ideas of any upstart third party. Moreover, until the early 1900s there was not much of a real policy difference between the two parties. You only cared to be on the winning side since it gave you access to a cushy federal job.
All that said when you look at that first 150 years or so the two major issues that did divide the parties and populace, states rights and slavery, caused an enormous amount of strife leading to war. Since the1920s or so more and more division has emerged amongst the people as some support an evolution of traditional American practices and some support an increasingly socialistic government. It is a testament to both the deep foundation laid in the first 150 years and the dangers of the outside world during the 20th Century that the US has not had an armed internal conflict due to these increasing differences.
I can't find the post here, but someone referenced the officer corps in the US for never having a coup. Prior to WWII, after wars the US Army usually quickly shrank itself back to a force that could fight Indians but not much more.
In the face of an armed populace it would have been difficult to have a successful coup that lasted prior to this time. In fact there were really only two such proposals in American history. The officers of the Continental Army wanted to attack the Continental Congress over backpay and then lead the army west to carve a kingdom out of Indian lands with Washington as the first king. This failed due to Washington's refusal to support it and personal pleas to his men to abandon the idea. The second was a number of officers in the Army of Northern Virginia asking Lee to dissolve the regular army as such and ask his soldiers to carry on a guerrilla war from Appalachia essentially seizing the authority of the civilian government of the CSA to carry on the war, and this also failed as Lee refused to participate in such an action.
They came out of an English tradition that didn't have much rebellion and where the king was by habit used to compromising with the people. The original founders were educated, idealistic men who tried to limit the franchise to people like themselves, and thus you had a succession of early presidents from this mold which laid the model for a peaceful transition in power. A two party system developed in which one or both parties usually quickly adopted the ideas of any upstart third party. Moreover, until the early 1900s there was not much of a real policy difference between the two parties. You only cared to be on the winning side since it gave you access to a cushy federal job.
All that said when you look at that first 150 years or so the two major issues that did divide the parties and populace, states rights and slavery, caused an enormous amount of strife leading to war. Since the1920s or so more and more division has emerged amongst the people as some support an evolution of traditional American practices and some support an increasingly socialistic government. It is a testament to both the deep foundation laid in the first 150 years and the dangers of the outside world during the 20th Century that the US has not had an armed internal conflict due to these increasing differences.
That's not English tradition as I recall it: the war of Matilda's succession to the throne in the 12th century, the Wars of the Roses (civil conflict) in the 14th century, the English Civil War in the 17th century, all characterized by a hard-fought erosion of regal power to the benefit of Parliamentary authority.
Ask the Catholics, Puritans, Quakers, Methodists, or the Irish about "how quickly" the public ratified tolerance of their ideas.
There's a case to be made that the American Revolution, as well as its Civil War, was born from that history. The "peaceful transition of power" came not from a people that didn't have much rebellion, but rather so much civil war that some other way had to be found.
Perhaps early Americans, being self-sufficient and living with a relatively unobtrusive govt after establishment of the US, had mostly local problems which they could deal with themselves and not require a nation-wide movement to get reform? A tradition was thus established.
It's vaguely reminiscent of the situation in Sicily, the cross-roads of the Mediterranean, held in succession by so many remote, foreign governments. With weak, distant govt, the Sicilians developed their own independent, stable system to ensure services & domestic tranquility: La Cosa Nostra.
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