Founding Fodder

In my own form of patriotic fervor this last 4th of July, I started reading about the process of the creation of our Constitution. I found somewhat to my surprise that it was not a particularly smooth process, but that in fact there was much debate about the shape the new Constitution would take.

First, let me refresh you memory about the time line leading up to the creation of the Constitution:

1. Starting around 1765 there were a series of Tax Acts and other incidents that built up to a rejection of English rule, which culminated in the start of the War in 1775.
2. The First Continental Congress met in 1774 in response to Intolerable Acts passed by the British Parliament.
3. The Second Continental Congress met in 1775, largely to manage the war effort.
4. In 1776 the Declaration of Independence was drafted and signed.
5. The Articles of Confederation, the governing constitution of the 13 States was drafted in 1777.
6. The Articles were not completely ratified until 1781, by the Second Continental Congress, which thereafter was called The Congress of the Confederation.
7. The war continued on for a total of over 7 1/2 years. It was hard fought and went back and forth with many victories for the British. Finally, late in 1782, with the help of the French, the British signed the Articles of Peace.
8. A Peace treaty was not ratified till April of 1783, and the Treaty of Paris was signed in September of 1783. The British troops left New York in November.
9. In September 1786 a group met with the intention of revising the Articles of Confederation, having the idea that there were many changes that would fix problems, and enhance the methods of governing.
10. After several formal proposals of changes, a Convention was set up in May, 1787 to debate and ratify a new Constitution.
11. The Constitution, after much debate, was adopted in its final form in September, 1787 by the Convention.
12. The Bills of Rights was introduced to as the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution in 1789 by James Madison.
13. Each state legislature had to ratify the new Constitution. There was much public debate during this period of time, and the final state did not ratify the Constitution until May of 1790.
14. The Bill of Rights was ratified in December of 1791.

So you can see that the foundations of our government did not just pop up overnight. There was considerable strife, toil, debate, and many years of controversy and uncertainty before the adoption of our Constitution in its final form. And there was certainly not universal agreement on the form of the government. There were many differing ideas and opinions on how our government should be structured.

The Federalists, wanted a powerful Central government. The Federalist Papers are well known, but how many have heard of The Anti-Federalists Papers. Thanks to my friend Duane for pointing out these writings. Some of our most famous founders were apparently quite against such a strong central government as was finally structured.

The political climate in the 1780's was one of diverse interests and goals. Yet, there was a common thread agreement that government should be by the 'consent' of the people, and not forced on them by a higher power or sovereign. The sovereignty of the nation was to rest in the people of the nation. The idea of monarchy was rejected, and even constitutional monarchy, where there was a parliament with limited rule by a monarch. On the other hand democracy was rejected, in the form of just local town hall meetings, or direct vote by the nation on all issues, as being too close to 'mob rule'. A republican form of government, where elected officials made the major decisions while in office was pretty much the agreed upon approach by the majority of the parties in the 1780s approaching the reshaping of the Constitution.

Yet, there were wide differences and a divergence of thought within this scope of approach. The different states represented a hodge-podge of various experiments in self-government and varied widely in their form of implementation. Going into the Constitutional Convention of 1787 there was much empirical data to evaluate on the results of these state governments and how the experiments had been going so far, as well as problems of how the states were to relate to each other and form a whole. The Articles of Confederation, while serving its purpose initially, had many flaws in practice. Patriots such as Patrick Henry and John De Witt had serious concerns about even the idea of having a strong central government, for fear it would get out of control.

Some of the points under debate in the Convention were:

• Whether Congress should be elected by the people or by State Legislatures. This was debated separately for both the House branch and the Senate.
• Whether there should be an Executive Power (president), and if so how to limit him so he did NOT have power to make war or peace
• Whether Executives should have salaries (Benjamin Franklin was opposed to this)
• Whether the powered vested in the Executive branch should in one person (like our Presidency), or many
• A debate on whether the national congress could negate laws passed by a State Legislature when deemed to be against federal law. Interestingly, in the vote at the end of this issue, it was strongly defeated. The federal government could not overrule Stale Legislatures.
• Debates about whether each state should have equal votes in Congress, since they had different populations
• Whether the Executive Branch could veto the Legislature, and how this worked
• much much more

The point was that the creation of our Constitution was not a easy process. with the final product whipped up in a few days time and the adopted. The State Constitutions and State governments were incubators for all variety of methods of governing, and this new and very wild experiment in national government was by no means an readily agreed upon set of rules. There was much toil, intellectual fighting, and hard debate before a final form emerged. The process took years. All states didn't ratify it until 2 2/3 years after the Constitution was drafted.

So, as I sit here in July, a couple of centuries plus after this great struggle to create a new form of government, I am thinking maybe we could struggle a little harder to keep and protect those rights, protections, and the form of government fought for so many years before.