The founding fathers wanted no part of a democracy on the Athenian model. They preferred a Republic basd on Roman political ideas. They also had a conception of "nation" very different from ours. They saw the USA very much like the European Union sees itself today: a loosely federated collection of independent states. George Washington did not think of himself as an American. He was a Virginian.

The last thing they wanted to see was government from a central location, or by a majority they saw as just rabble. In order to ensure this never happened, they designed a governmental system where government power was distributed, both functionally (legislative, executive, judicial) and geographically as well (local, state and national). The Electoral College played a major role in this, although today it has evolved in a way that it is barely rcognizeable to what is was 200 years ago. To the founders, the purpose of government was simply to provide law, stability and order in their locality, and to provide an environment where men of affairs could conduct those affairs free from interference and control. They needed nor wanted nothing else from government. The traditional external functions of national government, national defense, diplomatic relations, tariffs, international trade, were often neglected. These men worked primarily at the local level, they had no need for national policy.

The final end of this conception of government and nation was the Civil War, where the ascendancy of the Federal government was established once and for all. The telegraph and the railroad and the steamship made this possible, and the rise of the modern corporation, finance capital and industrialization made it necessary. The South, primarily agricultural and semi-feudal, saw the growth of the Federal government as a threat to the original conception of the country and their own way of life. They were right.

The world has changed a lot since then, but much of American politics, from the post colonial era to the present can still be understood as the continual struggle between these two ideas, and they often express themselves in racial terms. The Civil war was supposedly fought over slavery, to a great extent by recent American immigrants to the North, the States Rights movement of the 50s centered around opposition to Civil Rights, today we have illegal aliens. All people who came to these shores to work.

You may prefer to see it as the struggle between the city and the country, the corporation and the entrepreneur, management and labor, black and white, native and immigrant. They are all interrelated. History unfolds in strange ways according to blind laws, and like the world itself, there is a reason for everything, but a purpose to nothing.