15. The Constitution’s elements and American democracy were discussed for years prior to the Revolution
The precept adopted by the Founders when they debated the form of American government in 1787 were all well known among them. Bicameral legislative bodies existed in several European governments, including in Holland, and of course in the United Kingdom, where Parliament consisted of an elected lower house, Commons, and a hereditary House of Lords. At the time of the American Revolution, elected colonial legislatures had debated laws and ordinances, including internal taxation, for decades. The idea of a body of representatives voting democratically on issues affecting those who elected them had been present in American society since the Virginia Assembly first convened in 1619. Within a few years, the New England town meeting had taken hold as a form of a democratic government there. Yet the practice persists of linking American democratic notions to those of the Iroquois Confederation.
Americans at the time of the Constitutional Convention were certainly aware of the existence of the Iroquois, though the extent of their knowledge of the Native’s practices and government varied widely. Most of the framers of the Constitution had some knowledge of their government, having met many of the Iroquois leaders prior to and after the Revolutionary War. At the time, those framers were already sitting together in a Congress, with some similarities to the Great Council of the Iroquois, at least as regards what their assemblage was intended to accomplish. Were they emulating the Iroquois and their notions of democratic government? Some continue to contend they were, and that they adopted attitudes which influenced the shaping of the Constitution and the subsequent Bill of Rights, though concrete evidence of that as the fact remains elusive.