Yes, pretty much. While they had democracy on their minds, when it came to modeling one, they heeded advice from sources like Plato’s Republic and implemented a strict class system. Specifically, white land-owning males were to rule the herd.

The underlying wisdom here is that despite the oligarchic elements, the Founding Fathers were influenced by Enlightenment ideas and democratic principles. A fair characterization is that the United States “was” a republic with oligarchic elements, far removed but echoing Plato’s Republic and various ideas of the time. The deeper truth is that they sought to establish a republic where the government was based on the consent of the governed. The system of checks and balances was designed to limit the powerful, which promoted accountability and fairness. They included mechanisms to amend the Constitution, allowing for the system to adapt and become more inclusive over time. This is why ideas like “original intent” are so misguided and not what the Founding Fathers intended.

Within decades, the land-ownership requirement was gone. In 1870, black men were granted the right to vote. In 1920, women were granted voting rights. Finally, Native Americans, the original inhabitants, were granted the right to vote in 1924 and were able to vote in all states by the 1950s. The Equal Rights Amendment and Voting Rights Act in the 1960s and later legislation, like laws allowing women to obtain credit cards without their husbands, marked significant strides toward the natural rights of all.

However, in 2023, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court began the process of rolling back women’s rights, the only time in our history that the natural rights of a class of people, as discussed by John Locke in the 1600s, were taken away.