MOVING TOWARD AMERICA’S 250TH ANNIVERSARY
By
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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Hundreds
of representatives from across the United States gathered in
Williamsburg, Virginia in March for the nation’s first event to begin
planning for America’s 250th anniversary in 2026. Co-hosted by the
Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission (VA 250) and the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation, “Common Cause To All,” it drew nearly 300
representatives from 34 states.
The
timing of the event mirrored another historic moment that occurred 250
years earlier in Williamsburg. On March 12,1773, Virginia lawmakers
resolved to create inter colonial committees of correspondence —-a
network of communication that helped unite the colonies and lent vital
support for the Revolutionary movement.
America’s
250th commemoration must be more than “a big party,” Carly Fiorina,
chair of the Colonial Williamsburg Board of Trustees, told
participants. It must reflect America’s diversity while reinforcing its
unity, telling stories in which all citizens can see themselves
reflected in the nation’s history.
Fiorina
pointed out that, “The great movements forward in this country,
beginning with our Revolutionary movement, did not occur because
everyone agreed with each other. They did not occur because everyone
liked one another…The great movements forward succeeded because enough
individuals decided that their common cause and purpose was more
important than their individual differences…”
Committees
of Correspondence were something unique to America, said Stacy Schiff, a
historian of early American history. These committees answered the
question “of how revolutionary fervor had spread like lightning from one
end of the continent to the other. Ours was a Revolution powered by
ideas, arguably the first of its kind and the first of many that were to
follow for which it set a new paradigm.”
In
Schiff’s view, “It was necessary to pull together a continent, to
transcend local concerns and petty rivalries, to remind a people that
liberty is worth the cost of their lives, and the liberty of their
fellow colonists who spoke and dressed and worshipped differently is
worth the cost of their lives too.”
60
Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker told the group that, “American
history is the story of how we’ve changed since that first Virginia
Committee of Correspondence. It’s the history of George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, Gowan Pamphlet and Martin Luther King, Jr. Some parts
are not easy. Some parts are magnificent. But the best part—-it’s not
over. We are still writing our story.”
While
we often speak of ours as a young country, the fact is that Americans
live under the oldest continuous constitution in the world. When the
framers of the Constitution completed their work in 1787, the French
Revolution had not yet occurred. Italy and Germany were not nations,
but only a collection of warring states. No other people at the present
time is living under the same governmental structure which existed in
their countries 250 years earlier, only Americans.
At
the time of the 200th anniversary of the Constitution, Dr. Mark Cannon,
director of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S.
Constitution, noted that, “Nearly two-thirds of the world’s 160 national
constitutions have been adopted or revised since 1970, and only 14
predate World War ll…53.5 per cent of the independent states of the
world have been under more than one constitution since the Second World
War. The average nation has had two constitutions since 1945, and two
states, Syria and Thailand, have each had nine constitutions over the
past 40 years…The Constitution of the United States has proven
remarkably durable.”
The
U.S. Constitution changed Americans from being subjects of government to
being its rulers. In his book about the ideas and ideals of the
Constitution, “We Hold These Truths,” Mortimer Adler, who served as
chairman of the board of editors of the Encyclopedia Britannia, points
out, “The government of the United States resides in us—-we, the
people. What resides in Washington is the administration of our
government…I am sorry to say that most Americans think of themselves as
the subjects of government and regard the administrators in public
office as their rulers, instead of thinking of themselves as the ruling
class and public officials as their servants—the instrumentalities for
carrying out their will.”
Many
have criticized the authors of the Constitution for not eliminating
slavery in 1787. Sadly, slavery had been the way of the world since the
beginning of recorded history. In the ancient world and moving forward,
slavery was considered a natural condition of life, and had nothing to
do with race. It existed among nomadic pastoralists of Asia, hunting
societies of North American Indians, and sea people such as the
Norsemen. The legal codes of Sumer provide documentary evidence that
slavery existed there as early as the 4th millennium B.C. The Sumerian
symbol for slave in cuneiform writing suggests “foreign.” At the time
of Pericles, Athens had 43,000 citizens, who alone were entitled to vote
and discharge political functions, 28,500 metics, or resident aliens,
and 115,000 slaves. A century and a half later, Demetrius of Phalerum
took a census of the city and counted only 21,000 citizens , 10,000
metics, and 400, 000 slaves.
When
the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, not a single nation
had made slavery illegal. As they looked back through history, the
framers saw slavery as an accepted institution. It was not until 1792
that Denmark became the first Western nation to abolish the slave trade.
What may be historically unique is that so many of the leading men of
the American colonies of that day wanted to eliminate it—-and pressed
vigorously to do so.
Benjamin
Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were ardent abolitionists. John Jay,
who would become the first Chief Justice, was president of the New York
Anti-Slavery Society. Rufus King and Gouverneur Morris were in the
forefront of the opposition to slavery and the slave trade.
In
the end, the framers of the Constitution allowed a delay of confronting
the issue of slavery. While many criticized them for not eliminating
the slave trade immediately, others understood that they had set in
motion an opposition to slavery which would bear fruit in the future.
Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut stated that, “Slavery, in time, will not
be a speck in our country. Provision is already made in Connecticut
for abolishing it. And the abolition has already taken place in
Massachusetts.”
Many
today think the Framers should have eliminated slavery at the very
start of the country. They make a strong case, but it is in
retrospect. At the time, things seemed more complex. Most important,
James Madison pointed out at the time, is the fact that the Southern
states would not have entered into the Union “without the temporary
permission of that trade; and if they were excluded from the Union, the
consequences might be dreadful to them and to us…Great as the evil is, a
dismemberment of the Union would be worse. If those states should
disunite from the other states for not indulging them in the temporary
continuance of this traffic, they might solicit and obtain aid from
foreign powers.”
While
slavery was an extraordinary evil, and it took a Civil War to bring it
to an end, it is important to remember that prior to the late 18th
century, opposition to slavery in the world was virtually nonexistent.
Yet, in the American colonies there were vigorous anti-slavery societies
and in Philadelphia in 1787 the most prominent of the framers wanted to
eliminate slavery from the outset. They decided, however, that
establishing the Union had to take precedence and argued that the
question of slavery would have to be determined at a later time.
The
Constitution of the United States was not the first constitution ever
to have been drafted by a group of men assembled in what they themselves
called a Constitutional Convention. Between 1776 and 1780, Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina and Massachusetts held
constitutional conventions. Nor was the Constitution of the United
States the first explicitly formulated Constitution.
In
a treatise on Greek constitutions, Aristotle described and discussed
more than one hundred of them. But, Mortimer Adler tells us, “The
American Constitution created the first federal republic in the history
of the world. The first objective or aim mentioned in the Preamble, a
purpose distinctly different from all the other objectives mentioned
thereafter, is ‘to form a more perfect Union.’ Union of what? Of the
13 sovereign states that, in the preceding five years, had been United
under the Articles of Confederation…A federal republic is thus seen to
involve a plurality of sovereignties…”
When
the Constitution was written, the framers could look everywhere in the
world for an example of a free society with limited government—-and find
none to follow. No existing government in 1787 was designed to provide
its people with freedom, nor had any in past history.
The
framers set out to create something which had never been created
before—-an inherently perilous undertaking. That they succeeded is the
remarkable achievement we celebrate. They fully recognized the
uniqueness of their undertaking. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina
asked: “Is there, at this moment, a nation upon earth that enjoys this
right, where the true principles of representation are understood and
practiced, and where all authority flows from and returns at stated
periods to the people? I answer, there is not.”
The
achievement of the Constitutional Convention were considered miraculous
in their own day. In a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette on Feb.
7,1788, George Washington wrote: “It appears to me, then, little short
of a miracle that the delegates from so many different states (which
states you know are also different from each other, in their manners,
circumstances and prejudices) should unite in forming a system of
national government.”
James
Madison declared: “Happily for America, happily we trust for the whole
human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They
accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human
society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on
the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy,
which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate.”
One
of the unprecedented breakthroughs which the framers included in the
Constitution was that there would be no religious test for public office
or for citizenship.
Elsewhere
in the Western world, Catholics were without rights in Protestant
countries. Protestants were without rights in Catholic countries, while
Jews had rights in neither.
Charles
Pinckney lamented, “How many thousands of the subjects of Great Britain
at this moment labor under civil disabilities, merely on account of
their religious persuasions! To the liberal and enlightened mind, the
rest of Europe
affords a melancholy picture of the
depravity of human nature, and of the total subversion of those rights ,
without which we should suppose no people could be happy or content.
>From the European world are no precedents to be drawn for a people who
think they are capable of governing themselves. Instead of receiving
instructions from them, we may, with pride, affirm that, new as this
country is in point of settlement, inexperienced as she must be upon
questions of government, she still has read useful lessons to the old
world , she has made them more acquainted with their own rights, than
they had been otherwise for centuries…”
Prof.
Samuel Huntington points to the truly historic meaning of the
Constitution: “This is a new event in the history of mankind.
Heretofore most governments have been formed by tyrants, and imposed on
mankind by force. Never before did a people, in time of peace and
tranquillity, meet together by their representatives and, with calm
deliberation, frame for themselves a system of government.”
The
framers of the Constitution were under no illusion that they had
written a document which would stand the test of time without additions
and changes. It is for this reason that Article V of the Constitution
sets forth the process by which amendments can be adopted. James
Madison said that the founders hoped their successors would “improve and
perpetuate” the Constitution. They deliberately made the amending
process difficult to achieve so that the Constitution would not be
changed hastily and recklessly. But when there was a need for change,
there was a process established for bringing it about.
James
Iredell, a delegate from North Carolina, discussed the importance of
the clause providing for amendments: “This is a very important clause.
In every other constitution of government that I have ever heard or
read of, no provision is made for necessary amendments…The Constitution
of any government which cannot be regularly amended when its defects are
experienced, reduces people to this dilemma—-they must either submit to
its oppressions, or bring about amendments, more or less, by civil
war.”
That the
Constitution has survived for nearly 250 years and enabled Americans to
live in freedom and to attract to our shores men and women of every race
and religion and nation who sought liberty is testimony to the
extraordinary achievement of the framers whose 250th anniversary we are
now preparing to commemorate.
Sadly,
the teaching of our history in the schools has been in decline in
recent years. In preparation for the forthcoming 250th anniversary, we
should reverse course and restore the teaching of our early, and truly
unique, story. James Madison wrote: “Happily for Americans, happily we
trust for the whole human race, they (the founders) pursued a new and
more noble course.”