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| Gouverneur Morris |
Through the muggy summer
of 1787, up to 55 delegates from the 13 original colonies met in the State
House in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, which were weak
and weren't working. Once they were in the room together, they locked the doors
and closed the windows and began to innovate. What finally emerged in September
was a new Constitution for the "Union
of States."
Some of the men in that
room were outraged at the novel direction things were taking. They were openly
and red-facedly opposed to the whole new enterprise, and some of them -- like
feisty little Ellbridge Gerry -- refused to sign the finished document. They
had their reasons. They were afraid of the power being given a central government;
many were disturbed there was no Bill of Rights (which would come very quickly
after ratification); a handful hated that the text did not condemn and outlaw
slavery; some were outraged that God was not mentioned, credited, and coopted.
They were nervous. They were trying something wholly untested before, and they
had plenty of skin in the game.
But not bare skin in that
hot room. They wore heavy wool garments, and the windows were closed (to
prevent easedropping) during the hottest, muggiest, most punishing months of a
Philadelphia summer. Their passions rose as high as the temperature, and they
shouted at one another and insulted one another, but eventually passed by
majority votes some 23 "resolves," including the wholly unheard-of
idea of "three branches of government."
On September 8, 1787, they
gave those 23 resolutions to the "Committee of Style and
Arrangement," for the purpose of turning those statements into a text that
was sufficiently explicit enough to function and sufficiently vague enough to
breathe into the future.
The Committee was mainly
young. Alexander Hamilton was 30 years old; Rufus King, 32; Gouverneur Morris
of Pennsylvania, 35; James Madison of Virginia, 36. The oldest member, Dr.
William Samuel Johnson, the president of Columbia College, was 60, so he was
named chair of the committee.
But Gouverneur Morris
really wrote the thing. His Preamble still rings: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America."
By agreement of the
Constitutional Convention, ratification by at least nine states would be required
via state conventions. As those conventions started to take place, beginning in
Pennsylvania, vocal opposition to the whole project ranged from ferocious to
sometimes violent throughout the 13 former colonies of the Crown. In
Pennsylvania, before a ratification convention could even be planned, 19
anti-Constitutionalists ("Antifeds") locked themselves up in a
Philadelphia house, depriving the state assembly of a quorum. A mob of
Pennsylvania "Feds," pro-Constitutionalists, broke down the door of
the house and forcibly carted two of the abstainers to the meeting, thus establishing
a quorum. Later, after Pennsylvania ratified the document, Antifeds, armed with
clubs, attacked and beat one of the original signers, James Wilson, almost to
death.
A Baptist preacher in
North Carolina, a candidate for the state's ratification convention, told a
meeting of frontier parishioners to fear a central government: "…an army
of 50,000 or perhaps 100,000 men will … sally forth [from the Capitol] and
enslave the people, who will be gradually disarmed." Sound familiar?
Some of the ratification
votes were perilously close. In Pennsylvania, the margin for ratification was
comfortable enough -- 46-23. But in Massachusetts, with a whopping 355
convention delegates elbowing each other with Puritan malice, ratification
passed by only 19 votes, 187-168. New Hampshire ratified by a vote of 57-46.
Virginia came in at 89-79, with fiery old Patrick Henry setting fire to the air
and leading the Antifeds in very stiff opposition.
Eventually, even New York
and Rhode Island joined the Union, New York by a vote of 30-27 (holy crap!).
Rhode Island had been the bitch state all along, had stubbornly refused to even
send delegates to Philadelphia in the first place, but Rhode Island finally
capitulated and joined the other 13 on May 29, 1790, almost three full years
after the original composition of the document in the City of Brotherly Love.
Like the *woman said,
"miracle at Philadelphia."
George Mason, the Virginia
planter and a member of the Constitutional Convention, did not sign the final
document. He feared the form of government would produce a noxious oligarchy. I
fear he was right, but perhaps not for the reasons he foresaw.
Rich men are in the way of
owning this government, but I think not because of some inherent flaw in our
founding document. Cannot I blame the Supreme Court for (1) describing corporations as corpuscles with the
unalienable rights of men and women and (2) equating money with speech? If our
government has become the wholly owned subsidiary of men like the Kochs, of men
like Art Pope, of operatives like Karl Rove, can I not condemn the five bespoke
men on the Supreme Court who have enabled the purchase?
How could James Madison
and the other Philadelphia brethren foresee the perversions of money in their
grand design? Even George Mason did not prophesy a Supreme Court majority that
would exercise its biases with such broad destruction of democracy.
They invented the Supreme
Court as a check and balance on the Congress. But where is the check and
balance on a partisan majority on the Court? Through the election of
presidents, who must appoint the judges? Through the election of a Congress
with the courage to rise against money and erect effective barriers?
Maybe a new revolution
will come against the power of wealth, but maybe not in my limited lifetime.
*Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the
Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787
2 comments:
To which I say, "Amen!" Nicely put, Jerry.
They didn't fail us, we failed them.
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