Growing up in New York and New Jersey and a family background from New England, mostly Massachusetts, meant that some of the history of our early attempts to become a nation were going to rub off on me, like ticks climbing on to my clothing as I walked through tall grass. It was easier for much of my earlier years to try to pick the tidbits of history off my skin than it was to gather them into a container to study them and learn something of our great nation.
It seemed like every trip we took out of town led to some place where George Washington slept, or some battle was fought or some hero returned home. From Boston to Virginia, history was always nearby and on display. I don’t expect to ever go back east for any vacations, but if I did, they would be to revisit the early revolutionary war places.
It took the vicarious suffering I felt when I went to Valley Forge and later Gettysburg. Gettysburg may not seem like a likely battlefield to teach us about our early attempts to form a governement, but it had a lot to do with reexamining and restoring that form of government, kind of a Second Coming of the Constitution.
So the history of both periods began to fascinate me in my early teens, but it was the revolution and the decade or more after the conflict that is the better place to start to understand how we formed or more honestly, failed to form a working national government. In fact, we almost lost the whole revolutionary endeavor and subsequent unity of states as a result of weak documents and weak thinking among the leaders of our colonies.
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was the first constitution of the United States, followed in 1787, 1788 with the current constitution. This one has lasted almost 24 decades, longer than any other similar document.
It was very difficult to write it and promulgate it and it never seems to be as uniting as we had hoped. But it has served us well in many ways. And then the Amendments to it have brought needed improvements. All of this work was difficult and like pulling teeth on a Grizzly Bear with bubblegum for pliers. Dangerous and mind numbing and hyper partisan work took place in order to achieve some form of collaboration and long lasting processes for us to become the United States.
The principles in these documents are still with us, some have shifted, most have withstood the test of time. Slavery was allowed into these early documents and it has been revealed over time for the evil it was and is. In fact, it took a Civil War to rid ourselves of the subjugation of our fellow man. We are still arguing it, but we have made steps to grant us even better arguments going forward. Before the Civil War, the level of turmoil in the country could only be tamped down after a national fight, and not before. Did we have to have the Civil War, I don’t know. I’ve heard arguments on both sides. But we did have it, and we still have fires flare up from it. Yet, we are better positioned to learn from it and not repeat anything so horrific and inhumane again.
It is the Constitution, written in 1787, then ratified and instituted over the next two years that gave us the base level to become united and one nation. This is the document that is always being challenged, reworked, added to or taken away from while we are a nation. The saddest part is when we go through those national times of ignorance about it’s principles and use as a guide to our lives and governance.
It’s to be expected that many take no concern over the paper we call the US Constitution. In fact, many can and do live their lives without so much as a mention of it in their many years of living in the US. One can live their lives without a single thought about the pain and suffering that went into that document. But there are times when that document comes out of the case, from under the glass and calls forth the best in our citizens. It has happened quite a few times before and it will continue to happen. The times demand it. I think we are at one of the most powerful times of the Constitutions’s life because so many of the concerns of its writers are coming to bear upon us today like never before. Our economy and taxation, war and peace, settling the territorial disputes between states, national sovereignty and security, privacy and expression, religion and freedom are all deeply contested today like never before at this crossroads of information, technology, and conflict laden age we are living through.
Now is the time to take a second look at this Constitution, what it meant to the Founders, what they were afraid of, what they hoped for, what they saw in the future, what they failed to see or presage. Otherwise we will slide into another, more chaotic time, much like the time before the document. The document brought us together so much more than having no document at all. It is an excellent time to come together again, before we allow the document to die of neglect.
All free societies have their beginning, middle and ending. Where is ours today? The answer is found in the minds of its citizens. And the citizens that will move this country forward have a deep remembrance of where we came from and why we became a nation in the first place.