Once Upon a Constitution

Independence Day. I like this patriotic holiday. It makes me think the men and women whose visions created our country. They issued a document on or about July 4, 1776. Remember they didn't just declare our independence and stop. They kept right on creating documents.

On March 1, 1781, two years before the end of the Revolutionary War, an agreement between the states was ratified, The Articles of Confederation. Now we don't hear a great deal about them because The Articles of Confederation didn't work. It was one of those failures from which we learn.

Why didn't the Articles work? Several reasons. One, the established government was not truly representative. Each state had only one vote in the Congress regardless of the population of the state. Second, Congress was not given the power to tax, so raising funds to support the government was challenging. Third, the Articles did not provide for an executive branch to enforce the laws the Congress made.

Learning from the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation, a constitution was drafted. On June 21, 1788, the Constitution of the United States was ratified.

With this new document, the legislature was adjusted. In the Senate, with 2 Senators to each state, the concept of equal representation regardless of population was retained. In the House of Representatives, the number of representatives for each state is based upon population. An executive branch was created.

And man do we know our founders handled that tax thing.

Our Constitution. Over recent years, the nature of our Constitution has weighted heavily on most of our minds. We are acutely aware our founders couldn't solve everything. And so were they.

They understood compromise and they did it. They created a document ambiguous enough to satisfy most everyone while completely satisfying no one.

Race. Well, only for the purpose of determining representation in the House of Representatives, black men were to be considered as 3/5's of a person. Women, well they counted because the Constitution speaks of persons. Women just couldn't vote.

Supreme Court. This group has gotten a lot of attention over recent days. I'm not sure how important our founders thought the court would be. It seems the role of this court was only to decide if a law was constitutional or not. I believe in 1788 that wasn't a huge undertaking.

The Supreme Court was not provided a building of its own until 1936. Prior to this, the Court moved between a half-dozen locations in the Capitol Building.

Our Constitution does not establish the number of Justices on the court changed 6 times before settling on the current number of 9 in 1869.

I remember hearing that after a session of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “What kind of government have you given us?”

Franklin replied, “A democracy, if you can keep it.”

Contrary to my grandchildren's beliefs, I was not there.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. –Winston Churchill

Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin', published each week.