We the People ...

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Yesterday, September 17, was Constitution Day, a commemorative day to celebrate the signing of the final draft of the U.S. Constitution by members of what became known as the Constitutional Convention. The gathering of delegates from across the states was originally known as the Federal Convention, the Philadelphia Convention, or the Grand Convention. It was called by a group of leading men of the day--familiar names like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Dickinson as well as lesser known figures--who had gathered at Mann's Tavern in Annapolis, Maryland, in September 1786. Twelve delegates from five states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia) met there to discuss their concerns regarding the federal system set up under the Articles of Confederation (adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 in the midst of the Revolutionary War to provided a framework for the newly united states). The Proceedings of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government, as recorded on September 11, 1786, read, in part:

"That there are important defects in the system of the Federal Government is acknowledged by the Acts of all those States, which have concurred in the present Meeting; That the defects, upon a closer examination, may be found greater and more numerous, than even these acts imply, is at least so far probable, from the embarrassments which characterize the present State of our national affairs, foreign and domestic, as may reasonably be supposed to merit a deliberate and candid discussion, in some mode, which will unite the Sentiments and Council's of all the States. In the choice of the mode, your Commissioners are of opinion, that a Convention of Deputies from the different States, for the special and sole purpose of entering into this investigation, and digesting a plan for supplying such defects as may be discovered to exist, will be entitled to a preference from considerations, which will occur, without being particularized."

The Annapolis Convention issued a report that exhorted the Confederation Congress and states to summon delegates to a convention, as described above, to consider the identified defects and propose revisions to the Articles. Several, including Madison, had firm intentions to submit bigger changes than amendments; they wanted to replace the existing framework altogether. From May 25 to September 17, 1787, 55 delegates from twelve of the thirteen states (excepting Rhode Island) debated (often fiercely) the ideas that would culminate in the Constitution of the United States. It was not a perfect document, nor was it intended to be. Its authors, most of them anyway, knew well the folly of pretending to produce anything like a perfect plan for government among dozens of strong personalities with their own motivating concerns for disparate states with often competing interests. They aimed to devise and adopt a framework that would preserve the fledgling nation of states and accommodate enough of the states’ shared interests to secure agreement. They compromised on nearly every major feature of the proposed government. Many of those compromises are abhorrent to us today, and several were condemned even at the time by delegates who reluctantly accepted them.

Watch this video from PBS' CrashCourse to learn more about why delegates were gathering to revise the Articles and how the Constitution resulted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO7FQsCcbD8

The Constitution was an aspirational product born of and shaped by a particular political and social moment: It was a document written by and for mostly affluent White Anglo-European men. They ranged in age from 26 to 81; most were in their 40s. Most had attended university in the states or in Europe. Most had legal backgrounds. Most had public securities and other financial investments. Though many had "risen" from more modest backgrounds, only a few could be considered of modest means at the time, and those were still privileged in their education, had worked in business or law or served in the military or taught, and had been elected to local, state, or national office. This was not an inclusive or universalist body. Its members represented a narrow segment of American society, and the document they produced necessarily reflected both the political compromises required to unite the states and the profound limitations of the society in which they lived. We cannot, today or ever, understand and appreciate the accomplishments and the significance of the Constitution, its rhetoric, its principles, and its provisions without recognizing the reality of its circumstances, including its limitations and flaws. Its authors, and the framers who signed the document and the states that ratified it, recognized its imperfection (though they likely disagreed on the nature of its imperfections). That's why, as you might have (hopefully) learned somewhere along the way, they instituted separation of powers, checks and balances, and an amendment process. That's why, amid the ratification process, Madison committed to submitting a slate of proposed amendments to secure individual rights. He did so in June 1789 when he took his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives under the new Constitution. Madison proposed seventeen amendments, Congress approved twelve, and the states ratified ten, which were adopted as the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Check out this CrashCourse video on constitutional compromises. You can view other videos on the Constitution and the framework of our government here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO7FQsCcbD8

Notably, amid the ratification process, Mercy Otis Warren, one of half the body of Americans of whatever color and ethnic origin excluded from most political proceedings, waded into the discussion. Warren was a poet, playwright, essayist, and pamphleteer. In 1787, she published the pamphlet Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State conventions. (She also authored a three-volume set of books entitled A History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.) In Observations, Warren called for more safeguards in the Constitution to protect individual rights and defend against potential abuses and expansions of executive power. She actually opposed ratification and contributed to the Federalist and Anti-Federalist debate that pushed Madison toward his commitment, writing that "the origin of all power is in the people, and that they have an incontestible right to check the creatures of their own creation, vested with certain powers to guard the life, liberty, and property of the community." Warren later embraced the Constitution with the addition of the Bill of Rights, but her vociferous objections remind us that it's okay and even patriotic to ask questions, to point out potential weaknesses or problems, and to demand better. Her voice was one of many that helped secure the first ten amendments, and her reasoning undergirds ongoing demands for expanded and equal protection of rights.

Likewise, in 1791, Benjamin Banneker, a free Black mathematician, astronomer, writer, inventor, and farmer in Maryland, wrote to then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (who did not take part in the Constitutional Convention because he was in France as the time). With his letter, Banneker included a copy of his newly issued Almanac, a collection of astronomical calculations, weather and seasonal information, mathematical and scientific data, and poems and essays. (He again published the Almanac in 1792, 1793, 1795, and 1796.) He submitted his work to Jefferson as evidence "to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevails with respect to us," referring to Black persons. In a broader appeal to the principle written by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, Banneker asserted "that however variable we may be in Society or religion, however diversifyed in Situation or colour, we are all of the Same Family." Throughout his letter, Banneker masterfully uses logos, ethos, and pathos to call out the discrepancy between the young nation's expressed principles and the enslavement of Black people and to urge Jefferson to uphold those principles. Banneker reminds us that holding the nation accountable to its founding principles is itself an important form of civic participation. He used the founders' own liberty rhetoric to expose the gap between those ideals and the reality of slavery, which was still protected under the newly minted constitution.

Circling back, let's consider the perspective of the eldest member of the convention--Benjamin Franklin, who had first conceived a union of the states when he proposed the Albany Plan of Union in 1754 soon after the onset of the French and Indian War. To promote collaboration, he designed and published a cartoon entitled "Join, or Die" in his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin had taken part in the Albany Congress; publicized testimony to support the resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress and win the Stamp Act's repeal; served on the Committee of Secret Correspondence and the Secret Committee, as the First Postmaster General, and in the Second Continental Congress, including on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence; and participated in the Pennsylvania state constitutional convention before joining the Constitutional Convention. Despite his declining health, Franklin attended most of the 88 days when the Constitutional Convention officially met, including the day of its signing, September 17. On that day, he gave this closing speech in which he acknowledged the imperfects of the document the Convention had drafted but urged the delegates and states to unite behind it:

"I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present, but Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For having lived long, I have experienced many Instances of being oblig’d, by better Information or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own Judgment and to pay more Respect to the Judgment of others. Most Men indeed as well as most Sects in Religion, think themselves in Possession of all Truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far Error. [Sir Richard] Steele, a Protestant, in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only Difference between our two Churches in their Opinions of the Certainty of their Doctrine, is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the Wrong. But tho’ many private Persons think almost as highly of their own Infallibility, as that of their Sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who in a little Dispute with her Sister, said, I don’t know how it happens, Sister, but I meet with no body but myself that’s always in the right.

"In these Sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administred; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution: For when you assemble a Number of Men to have the Advantage of their joint Wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those Men all their Prejudices, their Passions, their Errors of Opinion, their local Interests, and their selfish Views. From such an Assembly can a perfect Production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our Enemies, who are waiting with Confidence to hear that our Councils are confounded, like those of the Builders of Babel, and that our States are on the Point of Separation, only to meet hereafter for the Purpose of cutting one another’s Throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. The Opinions I have had of its Errors, I sacrifice to the Public Good. I have never whisper’d a Syllable of them abroad. Within these Walls they were born, & here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the Objections he has had to it, and endeavour to gain Partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary Effects & great Advantages resulting naturally in our favour among foreign Nations, as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent Unanimity. Much of the Strength and Efficiency of any Government, in procuring & securing Happiness to the People depends on Opinion, on the general Opinion of the Goodness of that Government as well as of the Wisdom & Integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that for our own Sakes, as a Part of the People, and for the Sake of our Posterity, we shall act heartily & unanimously in recommending this Constitution, wherever our Influence may extend, and turn our future Thoughts and Endeavours to the Means of having it well administred.

"On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a Wish, that every Member of the Convention, who may still have Objections to it, would with me on this Occasion doubt a little of his own Infallibility, and to make manifest our Unanimity, put his Name to this Instrument."

Though Franklin stated that he would lay aside his concerns about and disagreements with elements of the Constitution in the interest of its adoption, it's worth noting that before he was a statesman, he was a printer, publisher, and author. Throughout his life, he championed freedom of speech and the press, open public discourse, and education. (In 1722, he published excerpts from Cato's Letters concerning freedom of speech in the July 2–9 issue of The New-England Courant following his brother's imprisonment for criticizing the Massachusetts government.) He was an early and persistent advocate of access to information and education and considered libraries and schools a civic investment. Though wary of vitriol and partisanship, he himself engaged in and encouraged vigorous debate, and though he was not without his own flaws, he reflected the potential of change and growth, of a relentless and evolving pursuit of liberty and equity. Having kept as many as seven enslaved persons over his lifetime, up until 1781, he became a vocal abolitionist late in life. Franklin served as President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in 1787 while acceding to the slavery compromises in the Constitution. In 1790, he submitted a petition to the House to "devise means for removing the Inconsistency from the Character of the American People," and to "promote mercy and justice toward this distressed Race." So, I feel confident that he would support free and open discussion of our nation's founding and of the debates, virtues and faults of the Constitution.

Decades later, in 1872, suffragist Susan B. Anthony was arrested for casting an illegal vote (as a woman) in that year's presidential election. She gave a pivotal speech to the court, before her sentencing, in which she reminds us that "We the People," through written by one segment of society in 1787, has a much deeper meaning as evidenced in the reality of the diversity of people who contributed to the building of the nation:

"It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. ... Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes."

Jumping farther ahead, in 1946, William Henry Hastie, Jr., the first Black federal judge in the United States, was quoted in the New York Times: "Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming, rather than being. It can easily be lost, but never is fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle.” The collection of quotes of which his was a part were printed in honor of what was then called “I Am an American Day,”first promoted by publisher William Randolph Hearst and signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. That holiday was celebrated in May. After World War II, as the Cold War set in, President Harry Truman signed a bill renaming the event “Citizenship Day" and moved the observed date to September 17, a date already celebrated as Constitution Day in many states and communities. In 1956, amid concerted nationwide efforts to unify that nation behind civic pride, President Dwight Eisenhower issued a proclamation celebrating Constitution Week from September 17 to 23. Skip ahead to 1997. A woman named Louis Leigh launched a grassroots campaign to expand constitutional literacy, and in 2004, Congress enacted yet another law, declaring a combined Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.

In 2016, President Barack Obama then reminded Americans that citizenship and the Constitution are not about the concentration of power, the elevation of a select few, the exclusion and marginalization of differences, or the attack of disparate opinions. Rather, they point us toward reciprocity, collaboration, compromise, empathy, and ongoing effort: