223 years ago, a group of men in a stuffy Philadelphia government building spent a stifling summer creating a four-page document that changed the world.
September 17 is Constitution Day, commemorating the signing of the United States Constitution in 1787. In over two centuries, countries around the world have seen revolution, coups, turmoil and chaos in which governments and constitutions are remade, discarded and remade again.
Yet with only 27 changes, the same crinkly four pages of parchment have served as the basis of one of the most successful democracies in history. It stands as one of our “holy trinity” of founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the United States Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution).
Today more than ever, students need to understand the development, tenets and underlying beliefs of our system of government in order to be productive citizens.
The following are quotes about our Constitution. Many are celebratory, some offer sage advice, and others give sharp critique. Whatever the point of view, it stands to reason that one crinkly set of papers caused so much commotion.
Happy Constitution Day, everyone!
“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” – Benjamin Franklin
“The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams
“The American Constitution is the greatest governing document, and at some 7,000 words, just about the shortest.” – Stephen Ambrose
“In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it.” – Thomas Edison
“As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” – William E. Gladstone
“A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.” – Thomas Paine
“Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.” – Alexander Hamilton
“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.” – Will Rogers
“The government was set to protect man from criminals — and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but against the government — as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.” – Ayn Rand
“I think there are only three things America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.” – Gerald Early
And lastly, the birthday document itself:
“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.” – Preamble, Constitution of the United States of America
This Day in History 11/21: The Mayflower Compact is signed
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The Mayflower Compact, signed on November 21 (November 11 in the old calendar), 1620, causes a lot of confusion.
Therefore, before we go any further, let’s get some things clear:
1. The so-called Pilgrims (or Separatists or whatever the fuck they wanted to call themselves) were not interested in creating a democracy.
2. They did not believe in religious freedom for anyone but themselves.
3. No one asked the Wampanoag, the Narragansett, the Patuxet or any of the other indigenous tribes of the region to sign this thing (which they would have happily done with a tomahawk to their pasty white skulls).
The usual line fed to us is that the Pilgrims created the Compact as the first form of government in the Thirteen Colonies of North America. There goes log of bullshit # 1–sorry, Jesus freaks, but the tobacco-growing, native-wenching planters of Virginia had you beat by one year, creating the House of Burgesses in 1619.
The other old saw follows that the Pilgrims intended to form a democratic form of government among the colonists, thus being the antecedent to the United States Constitution. Again…this is wrong on so many levels.
The reasons for the Compact were complex, but mostly had to do with the sizeable amount of colonists aboard the Mayflower who were (gasp!) not Pilgrims, Separatists, Puritans or anything else. They had no illusions about John Winthrop‘s City on a Hill, or creating a New Jerusalem in the wilderness–they came to go to Virginia and join the wenching tobacco planters. When the ship veered off course and landed at Cape Cod instead, the outsiders, or “strangers” claimed independence from the Pilgrim leaders. By contract, the voyage was to land in Virginia. It didn’t, so by law (at least in their mind) the Bible-thumpers had no control over them.
The Pilgrims, rightfully, got nervous. They understood that if they didn’t stick together, the colony would not survive, be it by starvation, disease, exposure, or the aforementioned tomahawks to the noggin. So they decided to bargain with the “strangers” and form a haphazard agreement. It was basically not much of a government at all, but rather a social contract meant to bind the colonists to the rules set forth from that point on.
The following is a modern translation of the Compact:
Three things are abundantly clear in reading this modern translation:
1. The Pilgrims had a shitty sense of geography. They still insisted they were in Virginia–albeit the “northern parts of Virginia.” This was probably put in to keep the “strangers” from trying any legal funny business. By that definition, Virginia should extend all the way to fucking Nova Scotia.
2. The Compact did not lay out a single plank for a framework of government. All it did was establish a “body politic” that would be bound to the rules and regulations of the colony, rules that are supposedly “convenient for the general good of the colony.” Exactly how these rules would be enacted–and especially who would be involved in government–was left eerily vague. Looking at the list of 41 white male signers, you can guess who was running things.
3. For a group of people threatened with prison, torture and death by their own home government, the Pilgrims still show a remarkable allegiance to James I of England, Scotland and Ireland–even going so far as to use his full and correct title TWICE (how’s that for filling a page!) This could lead modern readers to think the Pilgrims either still showed obedience to the sovereign or were real sado-masochists under those doublets and breeches.
Was the Mayflower Compact important? Sure it was. It was among the earliest attempts to create a social contract bound by the consent of the governed, albeit imperfectly. It embodied the social and communal ideals of the Separatist movement, emphasizing rule of law and mutual cooperation.
Yet was the Compact the big thing our teachers made it out to be? Probably not. It didn’t establish a government at all. It didn’t stipulate the rights of colonists. It didn’t lay a foundation for governance or the creation of laws.
Worst of all, the Pilgrim fathers certainly had selective amnesia about the Compact when it came to women, dissenters and especially Native Americans. The subsequent wars over New England, particularly the Pequot War of 1637 and especially King Phillip’s War of 1675-1676, demonstrate a concerted effort by the English colonists to marginalize, exclude and ultimately erase any native influence on their culture and their precious Compact.
It would take another 167 years of foundations–and another two centuries of defining those foundations–to actually create the system that lived up to the Pilgrim ideal.
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