Reddit mentions of The Americans: The Colonial Experience

Sorry, I got busy. The best I can do right now is give a link to James Madison in the Federalist. It specifically mentions the dangers of direct democracy. Beyond that, I would just try to find a good history of the US, which I should do myself, because I don't know much about the various views of the founders. Daniel Boorstin has a good, readable series, but I'm sure there are many good ones. If you have access to a university library, you might ask the librarian. While looking for sources for you, I realized my answer above was probably inadequate.

Daniel Boorstin's 3-volume "The Americans" is incredible (here's the first one, the other two are the National Experience and the Democratic Experience). He was the Librarian of Congress for years. The book is told on the level of what it was like to be a person living at the time, rather than on the level of society (i.e. here are a few great men, here are a few important decisions; the rest doesn't matter). And while I learned a lot from Zinn, I find Zinn to be reacting to the prejudices of the American education system about history. If you weren't exposed to those prejudices in the first place, I don't know that he's the best place to get the full story.