When Was America Great and for Whom?
- Ash A Milton
- 16 minutes ago
- 14 min read
The Founding Fathers, Women's Rights, and the Question of Freedom in Modern America
I often see people expressing that the Founding Fathers would not approve of what is happening in America today. I think quite the opposite. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts mass raids, when state legislatures restrict reproductive rights, when federal courts roll back civil liberties—these actions would likely seem entirely familiar to the men who drafted the Constitution. The world being demonstrated by ICE enforcement policies today, with their disparate impact on communities of color and their frequent disregard for due process protections, mirrors precisely the hierarchical society the Founders constructed: a country where Black, brown, red, and yellow people possessed no meaningful rights, where many were considered property, and where women had no rights beyond what their fathers or husbands permitted.
The Founders planted a wonderful kernel of democratic possibility, articulating principles of equality and natural rights that would eventually transcend their original intent. But that kernel was planted in poisoned soil, cultivated exclusively for people who looked, thought, and lived like them. Two hundred and fifty years later, we are witnessing the collision between that narrow vision and the expansive interpretation of "We the People" that civil rights movements have fought to establish.
The question that haunts contemporary America remains the same one Abigail Adams posed to her husband John in 1776: who deserves freedom, and who gets to decide?
The Constitutional Framework of Exclusion
The United States Constitution, celebrated as a revolutionary democratic document, was written by and for a remarkably narrow slice of humanity. Of the 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, all were men, all were white, and the vast majority were wealthy property owners. At least 25 of them enslaved human beings. The document they produced reflected not universal principles of human dignity but rather the specific interests and prejudices of elite white men in the late eighteenth century.
The Constitution's treatment of slavery illustrates this foundational exclusion with brutal clarity. Although the Founders avoided using the word "slave" in the document—a telling omission suggesting their awareness of the moral contradiction—they nevertheless embedded slavery's protection throughout the text. The Three-Fifths Compromise counted enslaved persons as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation and taxation, simultaneously denying their humanity while leveraging their existence to increase Southern political power. Article I, Section 9 prohibited Congress from banning the international slave trade until 1808, guaranteeing twenty more years of legally sanctioned human trafficking.
The Fugitive Slave Clause required that escaped enslaved people be returned to their enslavers, effectively making the federal government an enforcer of human bondage.
Indigenous peoples fared no better under this framework. Despite being the continent's original inhabitants, Native Americans were explicitly excluded from constitutional protections. Article I, Section 2 specified that "Indians not taxed" would not be counted in determining representation, effectively treating indigenous nations as foreign entities while simultaneously claiming sovereignty over their lands. This legal framework justified removal, dispossession, and genocide—policies that intensified after the Constitution's ratification.
Women's exclusion from the Constitution was so complete as to be nearly invisible. The document contains no mention of women at all—a silence that spoke volumes. This absence was not an oversight but a reflection of the legal doctrine of coverture, which held that a married woman's legal identity was subsumed into her husband's. Under coverture, married women could not own property, sign contracts, keep their own wages, or have custody of their children.
Single women had slightly more legal standing but still lacked political rights. As Abigail Adams presciently warned her husband John in March 1776, "Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors." John Adams dismissed her concerns with condescending humor, replying that men would not "repeal our Masculine systems." He was right—they would not, not for another 144 years.
Thomas Jefferson: Liberty's Author, Slavery's Architect
No Founding Father embodies the chasm between America's professed ideals and lived realities more starkly than Thomas Jefferson. As principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson penned some of the most stirring words in democratic history: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Yet the man who wrote these words enslaved more than 600 human beings over his lifetime.
Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings reveals the depths of this contradiction and the particular vulnerability of enslaved women. Hemings was approximately fourteen years old when Jefferson, then in his mid-forties and serving as American minister to France, began what euphemistic history has called a "relationship" with her. This terminology obscures a fundamental truth: an enslaved child cannot consent to sexual relations with the man who owns her. Modern DNA evidence has confirmed that Jefferson fathered at least six of Hemings's children, only four of whom survived to adulthood. He never freed Hemings, though he did free two of their children during his lifetime and allowed the other two to leave Monticello without pursuit after his death.
This pattern of sexual exploitation was not unique to Jefferson but systemic within the institution of slavery. Enslaved women had no legal recourse against rape, no ability to refuse sexual demands from white men, and no rights to their own children, who were themselves enslaved from birth. The Virginia law of partus sequitur ventrem—literally "that which is brought forth follows the womb"—ensured that any child born to an enslaved mother was enslaved regardless of the father's status. This legal doctrine created a financial incentive for the rape of enslaved women, as it increased the enslaver's property holdings. Jefferson himself benefited from this law, as each child Sally Hemings bore added to his wealth.
Jefferson's writings reveal his awareness of slavery's moral bankruptcy alongside his unwillingness to meaningfully challenge it. In Notes on the State of Virginia, he condemned slavery as corrupting to both enslaved and enslaver, writing, "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other." Yet he continued to enslave people, purchased more enslaved people while president, and pursued escaped enslaved people with vigor. His solution to the "problem" of slavery was not abolition but colonization—the forced deportation of Black Americans to Africa.
This proposal revealed his ultimate allegiance: preserving white supremacy mattered more than achieving the equality he claimed to champion.
John Adams and the Women Who Demanded Recognition
John Adams occupies a complicated position in the pantheon of Founding Fathers. Unlike many of his peers, Adams never enslaved anyone and expressed moral opposition to slavery, though he did little to actively combat it. However, his treatment of women's political rights—particularly his dismissal of his own wife's entreaties—reveals the limits of his enlightened thinking and the broader gender exclusions that would persist for over a century.
Abigail Adams's March 1776 letter to John remains one of the most prescient documents of early American feminism.
As the Continental Congress debated independence, she wrote: "I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."
Her warning was both prophetic and radical—she understood that the revolutionary principle of "no taxation without representation" applied equally to women.
John Adams's response revealed the casual dismissal women's concerns received even from supposedly enlightened men. He wrote back: "As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh. We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government every where. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient—that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent—that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented."
His mockery extended to suggesting that giving women political rights would lead to complete social dissolution: "Depend upon it, We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems."
Abigail Adams was not alone in her political consciousness. Mercy Otis Warren, a playwright and historian, published political satires criticizing British tyranny and later wrote a three-volume history of the American Revolution. Judith Sargent Murray published essays under male pseudonyms arguing for women's intellectual equality and educational opportunities. Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman who gained her freedom, published poetry that demonstrated not only literary genius but also subtle critiques of slavery and colonialism. These women understood politics, engaged in political discourse, and recognized the contradictions inherent in a revolution for liberty that excluded them.
Yet their voices were systematically excluded from formal political participation. The Constitution granted states the power to determine voting qualifications, and every state limited suffrage to men—in most cases, to white men who owned property. Women could not vote, could not hold office, could not serve on juries. Their legal status was that of permanent minors or, if married, legal nonentities. This exclusion was not accidental or thoughtless but deliberate, reflecting deeply held beliefs about natural hierarchy and proper social order.
The Long Road to Legal Personhood and Political Rights
The expansion of rights to women and people of color required constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and federal legislation—each achievement hard-won through decades of activism, organizing, and sacrifice. These rights were not granted magnanimously by those in power but extracted through sustained political pressure and social movements that refused to accept their exclusion.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War, represented the first constitutional attempt to define citizenship inclusively and guarantee equal protection under law. Its first section declared: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This language directly overturned the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which had declared that Black people "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited denying the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Yet this protection proved largely theoretical in practice, as Southern states implemented poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and outright violence to prevent Black citizens from voting. Not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965—nearly a century after the amendment's ratification—did the federal government begin seriously enforcing these constitutional protections.
Women's suffrage required its own constitutional amendment. The women's suffrage movement, which began formally at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, spent 72 years organizing, protesting, and lobbying before achieving victory with the Nineteenth Amendment's ratification in 1920. (This history is covered more extensively in other articles on this site.) Yet even this achievement was incomplete—many women of color continued facing barriers to voting through Jim Crow laws and discriminatory practices, and Native American women in some states could not vote until 1962.
The mid-twentieth century brought a cascade of legal changes that finally began dismantling coverture's legacy and establishing women's independent legal personhood. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 required equal pay for equal work regardless of sex, though enforcement remained weak and wage gaps persist. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination based on sex (along with race, color, religion, and national origin), providing legal recourse for workplace discrimination. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibited sex-based discrimination in educational programs receiving federal funding, opening educational opportunities previously denied to women.
Reproductive rights emerged as a critical frontier in women's autonomy and bodily integrity. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting contraceptive use by married couples, establishing a constitutional right to privacy in marital relations. Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended this right to unmarried individuals, recognizing that "if the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."
Roe v. Wade (1973) recognized a constitutional right to abortion, though within a framework that balanced state interests against individual liberty. For nearly fifty years, this decision stood as a bulwark protecting women's reproductive autonomy. Its overturning by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) represented not progress but regression, returning abortion regulation to states and resulting in total or near-total bans in numerous jurisdictions. The Dobbs decision revealed how fragile these gains remain—rights that took centuries to secure can be eliminated with a single court decision when political will shifts.
Economic independence required its own legal scaffolding. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 prohibited credit discrimination based on sex or marital status, ending practices where women needed male co-signers for loans or credit cards. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 amended Title VII to prohibit employment discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 provided federal resources for prosecuting gender-based violence and supporting survivors, recognizing that freedom from violence is prerequisite to genuine liberty.
Rollback and Resistance: The MAGA Movement's Vision of America
The slogan "Make America Great Again" contains an implicit question: when was America great, and for whom? The policies and rhetoric of the MAGA movement provide an answer that should trouble anyone committed to inclusive democracy. The "greatness" being invoked is one where straight white men faced few challenges to their authority, where women's primary identity was as wives and mothers, where people of color knew their place, where LGBTQ+ people remained invisible, and where immigration primarily meant Europeans seeking opportunity.
This nostalgia is not subtle. Consider the attacks on reproductive rights, which have accelerated dramatically since the Dobbs decision. States have enacted laws that would have been unthinkable a decade ago: total abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest, criminal penalties for doctors who provide reproductive healthcare, bounty systems encouraging citizens to sue anyone who "aids or abets" an abortion.
These laws treat women not as autonomous moral agents capable of making decisions about their own bodies and futures, but as vessels whose reproductive capacity belongs to the state. This is coverture repackaged for the twenty-first century—the state, rather than the husband, claiming authority over women's bodies and choices.
Immigration enforcement under recent administrations has revealed similar patterns of exclusion and hierarchy. ICE raids targeting workplaces, schools, and courthouses create climates of fear in immigrant communities. Family separation policies treat asylum-seeking parents as criminals and their children as pawns. The rhetoric surrounding immigration enforcement frequently invokes racial coding—discussions of "criminals" and "rapists," "invasions" and "infestations"—that dehumanizes people of color while positioning white Americans as victims needing protection.
These enforcement practices often operate with minimal regard for the constitutional protections that, on paper, apply to all persons within U.S. jurisdiction. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, yet ICE agents regularly conduct raids and detentions that would be unconstitutional if applied to citizens. The Fifth Amendment guarantees due process, yet immigration courts operate with minimal procedural protections, defendants lack guaranteed legal representation, and detention can last months or years. The world demonstrated by contemporary immigration enforcement—where brown and Black people can be seized, detained indefinitely, separated from their children, and deported without meaningful due process—bears disturbing similarity to the hierarchical vision the Founders constructed.
Efforts to restrict voting rights stem from the same exclusionary tendencies. After the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which weakened significant parts of the Voting Rights Act, states have implemented laws that complicate the voting process: stringent ID requirements, shortened early voting periods, closures of polling places in minority areas, and purges of voter rolls. These actions do not affect all Americans equally—they place a heavier burden on people of color, the elderly, the poor, and the young. The result, whether or not it is the explicit goal, is to create an electorate that is whiter, wealthier, and more conservative. The SAVE Act, recently passed in the House, would disproportionately affect married women who have changed their names.
What unites these disparate attacks on rights is a common thread: resentment of demographic and cultural change, anxiety about lost status and privilege, and desire to restore a hierarchical order where power flows along familiar axes of race, gender, and class.
Over the past five to six decades, all marginalized groups have gained substantial wealth, freedom, and autonomy. Women have entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers, achieved educational parity and then surpassed men in college completion, gained legal rights to control their own bodies and finances. People of color have broken barriers in every field, built generational wealth, and increasingly occupy positions of political and cultural power. LGBTQ+ Americans have won rights to marry, serve openly in the military, and live without constant fear of legal persecution.
These gains represent progress toward the inclusive vision of "We the People" that civil rights movements have fought to establish. But for those whose identity and status derived from belonging to the dominant caste, this progress feels like loss. When you've been taught that the natural order places you at the top of the hierarchy, equality feels like oppression. When you've enjoyed unchallenged authority in the workplace, at home, and in the public square, being asked to share power feels like persecution. This is the animating force behind much of the MAGA movement: not economic anxiety, not forgotten communities, but white men feeling threatened by the rise of everyone else.
Freedom for Whom? The Unfinished American Project
The Founding Fathers created a country based on freedom—but freedom for a carefully circumscribed group. Their democracy was never meant to include the majority of people living within its borders. The revolutionary principles they articulated contained seeds of broader application, but those seeds remained deliberately unplanted in soil where they might actually grow beyond the garden's original gates.
Every expansion of rights since the Founding has required challenging and overturning the Founders' explicit vision. The Fourteenth Amendment repudiated the Constitution's accommodation of slavery. The Nineteenth Amendment rejected the Founders' exclusion of women. The Civil Rights Act defied centuries of legally sanctioned discrimination. The Violence Against Women Act recognized that women's safety matters as much as men's. Each of these achievements represented not fulfillment of original intent but correction of original injustice.
We stand now at a crossroads. The question before us is the same question that has haunted American democracy since its inception: freedom for whom? Will we continue the unfinished project of making American democracy genuinely inclusive, of ensuring that constitutional protections apply equally regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin? Or will we retreat to the Founders' narrow vision, where freedom means freedom for some and hierarchy for the rest?
The MAGA movement's attacks on voting rights, reproductive rights, immigration protections, and civil rights protections represent a choice—a choice to return to the Founders' original hierarchy rather than continue expanding the circle of inclusion. These attacks succeed because they tap into anxieties that are real, even if misdirected: white men are indeed losing something, but what they're losing is not opportunity or freedom but rather unchallenged dominance.
The irony is that the Founders themselves provided the tools for transcending their limitations. The Declaration's assertion that all are created equal, the Constitution's provisions for amendment, the First Amendment's protections for speech and assembly—these mechanisms have enabled every subsequent expansion of rights. The document's flexibility has allowed Americans to correct the Founders' mistakes without abandoning constitutional governance entirely.
But we should not mistake this flexibility for inevitability. Rights once won can be lost. The Dobbs decision demonstrated this with stark clarity. Protections once thought settled can be eliminated when courts and legislatures hostile to them gain power. The Voting Rights Act's gutting showed that even landmark civil rights legislation can be neutered. What took decades to build can be dismantled in years.
This is why the question "When was America great?" matters so much.
The answer reveals whether one believes greatness lies in the Founders' exclusive vision—a republic for white men of property—or in the civil rights movements' inclusive vision—a multiracial, multi-gender democracy where all people possess dignity, autonomy, and equal protection under law. The first vision requires rolling back the past six decades of progress. The second requires defending those gains and continuing to expand them.
When Abigail Adams wrote to her husband asking him to "remember the ladies," she understood something fundamental: liberty is not naturally expansive but must be demanded, fought for, and defended. The Founders did not remember the ladies, did not remember the enslaved, did not remember the Indigenous peoples whose lands they occupied. But those excluded from the Founders' vision remembered themselves, organized, resisted, and gradually forced America to live up to principles its Founders articulated but never intended to apply universally.
The contemporary struggle over whose freedom matters continues this historical arc. Will we allow ICE enforcement practices to create a two-tier system where constitutional protections apply selectively based on perceived immigration status? Will we permit states to treat women as second-class citizens whose bodily autonomy depends on geography? Will we accept voting restrictions that disenfranchise citizens based on race and class? Will we tolerate the dismantling of civil rights protections hard-won through generations of activism?
These are not hypothetical questions but urgent realities. The answers we provide through our votes, our activism, our resistance, and our solidarity will determine whether America continues evolving toward genuine inclusive democracy or retreats to the Founders' hierarchical vision. The kernel the Founders planted contained possibility, but that possibility required two and a half centuries of struggle to begin flowering. The question remains: freedom for whom?
Our generation must continue the battle the for freedom for all. The fight of white liberal woman and empathy for other is not new, nor is it limited to white women in America, or white women, or women. All people deserve basic human rights.
The words of Emily Pankhurst visiting America echo "They have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death." – Hartford, Connecticut, 13th November 1913
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