[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 114 (Friday, September 22, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9119-S9122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE 213TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIGNING OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION--
SEPTEMBER 17, 1787
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, in commemoration of the signing of the
Constitution and in recognition of the importance of active,
responsible citizenship in preserving the Constitution's blessings for
our Nation, the Congress, by joint resolution of August 2, 1956 (36
U.S.C. 159), requested that the President proclaim the week beginning
September 17 and ending September 23 of each year as ``Constitution
Week.'' That has happened each year since.
This week the United States celebrates one of its greatest
achievements. Two-hundred and thirteen years ago, on September 17,
1787, the Founding Fathers placed their signatures on the newly created
Constitution in Philadelphia's Independence Hall. Eleven years earlier,
6 of the 39 signers of the U.S. Constitution signed the Declaration of
Independence in the same building in Philadelphia. Within the lifespan
of a single generation, Americans had effectively declared their
independence twice.
In many ways, the liberation claimed from Britain in 1776 was less
remarkable than the historical achievement that Americans claimed by
framing the Constitution in 1787. The Constitution represented a
triumph of political imagination and pragmatism by recognizing that
ultimate political authority resides not in the government, or in any
single government official, but rather, in the people.
The Founding Fathers had used the doctrine of popular sovereignty as
the rationale for their successful rebellion against English authority
in 1776 when they framed the Declaration of Independence. They argued
that the government's legitimacy remains dependent on the governed, who
retain the inalienable right to alter or to abolish their government.
The Declaration of Independence set forth their justifications for
breaking with Britain, but, until September 17, 1787, they had not yet
been able to work out fully how to implement principles of popular
sovereignty, while, at the same time, preserving a stable government
that protects the rights and liberties of all citizens. The
Constitution is a mechanism for advancing the principles of the
American Republic stated so eloquently in the Declaration of
Independence. To paraphrase former Chief Justice Warren Burger, the
Declaration is the promise, the Constitution is its fulfillment.
The new republican union created in 1776 was a truly unprecedented
experiment, whose future was very much in doubt. Not only were the
former British colonies unsure of whether they would be successful in
their war for independence, but there was also doubt that the American
colonials would be able to create a stable republican government, able
to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens, without
backsliding into the same authoritarian rule experienced under Britain.
For this reason, it is appropriate that we take this moment, 213 years
later, to reflect on a document that completed an uncertain process
that was begun, from a documentary standpoint, on July 4, 1776.
I have spoken on several occasions about the taproots and the origins
of the U.S. Constitution. Of course, the State constitutions, some of
which had been in existence since early 1776, greatly influenced the
framers. Many of the ideas in the State constitutions had already been
tested under colonial experience, and as a matter of fact, under the
British experience, and were later reborn in our national charter. The
establishment of a national bicameral legislature finds its roots in at
least 9 out of 13 State constitutions. Of course, the roots extended
prior to that but in at least 9 of the 13 State constitutions we find
the enlargement of the roots, the fleshing out of the roots, the
nourishing of the roots.
Lessons derived from recent political experiences were arguably as
likely to influence the thinking of the founding
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framers as the maxims and axioms of, among others, the English
philosophers John Locke, Sir William Blackstone--one of the great legal
authorities of all time--John Milton--that great author of ``Paradise
Lost'' and ``Paradise Regained'', Algernon Sydney, and other great
works--Scottish philosopher David Hume, and French philosopher Baron de
Montesquieu, all of whom were part of the intellectual Enlightenment
period.
Likewise, many of the institutional practices embedded in the U.S.
Constitution hark back to England and its Constitution, which, although
it is largely unwritten, does contain such written documents as the
Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, and the English Bill of Rights.
Many of the amendments incorporated into the U.S. Bill of Rights can be
found, almost word for word, in those political documents.
But, to truly understand and appreciate the U.S. Constitution and the
political movement that led to its creation, one must become familiar
with the first national charter that was established by the newly
independent colonies--namely, the Articles of Confederation.
Many Americans have heard of the Articles of Confederation, fewer
Americans probably ever read those Articles of Confederation.
The operation of government under that national charter provided the
most visible examples of what republicanism meant in practice. Its
failure not only drove the movement for constitutional reform--when I
say ``its failure,'' I mean the failure of the Articles of
Confederation--not only drove the movement for constitutional reform
that brought the framers to Philadelphia in 1787, but also brought
experimental evidence--ah, how important was that experimental
evidence--from which the framers drew in creating a greatly improved
model of republican government.
From its inception, the first national charter--the Articles of
Confederation--had limited goals. The Articles provided for what was
essentially a continuation of the Second Continental Congress by
creating a unicameral legislature, where each State was represented
with one vote. This body had the authority to declare war, to conduct
diplomacy, to regulate Indian affairs, to coin money, and to issue
currency, among other things. However, to limit the threat of a
centralized authority, Congress could not levy taxes or regulate trade.
The crucial power of the purse rested solely with the States, which
were to contribute funds at the request of the Congress. The Articles
further limited centralized power by providing the States with total
enforcement authority so that the Congress could do no more than to
recommend policies to the States. When it came to money, it could do no
more than just request the funds from the States. The States, which
then could accept or ignore these recommendations, most of the time
failed to provide the funds. Many times the States would provide some
of the funds but not all of the funds requested.
Looking back, the inherent weaknesses of the Articles seem obvious
now, but all of these limitations on the Congress were designed with
the specific intention of making the State legislatures the dominant
force in the Government. This may seem peculiar to us today, but, at
the time, loyalty to the State Governments rather than to the Nation
underlaid the mentality of post-war America. We oftentimes forget that
the Articles were drafted in 1777 in the midst of the Revolutionary
War. At the time, delegates were more concerned about keeping up with
the demands of the Continental army, and, perhaps more importantly,
avoiding capture by the British army which had occupied New York City
and Philadelphia in 1777 than in drafting a national charter. In fact,
it was not until 1781--4 years later--that the Articles of
Confederation had been ratified by the thirteen States. With the new
Nation in the midst of a military crisis, Congress assumed correctly
that the States would contribute funds and men to the common defense.
From the Framers' perspective--the framers of the Articles of
Confederation--the greatest problem in 1777 was curbing executive
power. And that is still a problem today. What had driven the colonies
into rebellion was an abuse of executive power by the king, his
ministers, and his agents. To ensure that the executive could never
again threaten the popular liberty, national government was made
subservient to the States in order to preserve the sovereignty of the
States.
What ultimately began to alter the American psyche can only be
described as Congress' impotence in addressing incidents of unrest in
the Nation. Efforts had been underway to amend the Articles even before
they took effect on March 1, 1781. One week earlier, Congress had asked
the States to approve an amendment authorizing it to collect a five
percent tariff on imported goods. This amendment was the outgrowth of
the economic condition of the country at the time. By 1781, American
merchants found themselves deeply in debt after the British and French
closed markets in the Caribbean to their trade, and Americans continued
to import large amounts of luxury goods. At the same time, the Congress
and States were printing paper money to finance their debts, which were
backed only by their promise to redeem the bills with future tax
receipts. By 1781, the currency had become worthless and led Americans
to coin the expression, ``not worth a continental.'' The printing of
paper money combined with a wartime shortage of goods led to an
inflationary spiral of fewer and fewer goods costing more and more
money. The goal of the amendment introduced in February 1781 was to tax
imports, which would simultaneously reduce the demand for imports while
forcing British and French merchants to open their Caribbean trade
routes. The amendment would ultimately fail when Rhode Island refused
to approve it.
Congress was faring no better in foreign diplomacy. In 1784, Spain
closed New Orleans and the Mississippi river to American trade,
preventing settlers living to the west of the Appalachian mountains
from shipping their goods to the Gulf of Mexico, and thence to other
markets. This action, coupled with the abortive separatist movements in
Kentucky and Tennessee, threatened to divide the American Nation into
two or three separate confederacies by forcing southwestern territories
to accommodate themselves to Spain. In 1785, Congress instructed
Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay to negotiate a treaty with Spain
that would allow the southwestern States to navigate the Mississippi,
and thus, ensure southwestern loyalty to the American Nation. The
Spanish emissary, Don Diego de Gardoqui, however, proved to be the more
formidable diplomat. He convinced Jay to sign a treaty by which the
United States would relinquish all rights to the Mississippi for
twenty-five years in return for Spain acknowledging U.S. territorial
claims in the southwest. When the treaty became public knowledge,
however, southwestern territories were outraged, further dividing the
Nation. Congress attempted several times in the 1780s to give Congress
greater authority to regulate both foreign and interstate commerce. The
amendments, however, were never unanimously approved by the States.
In both of these matters of diplomacy and economics, Congress under
the Articles of Confederation, found that its proposals would founder
on the requirement of unanimous State ratification. This requirement
led the supporters of a stronger national government to believe that
such a policy could only be pursued through a limited, piecemeal
approach. The desultory history of all of the amendments that Congress
had fruitlessly considered since 1781 suggested that more radical
approaches stood little chance. However, by 1786, it became clear that
the states stood little chance of ever unanimously agreeing to
amendments. With Congress losing what little influence it had, it soon
became clear to a group of Virginians that any reform efforts would
have to first come from the states.
The most important effort toward reform therefore took place in
Virginia in January 1786, when the state legislature approved a
resolution calling for an interstate conference to consider vesting
more power in the confederation Congress to regulate commerce. The
Convention was to take place in Annapolis, Maryland, and, although only
five states sent delegates to attend the Annapolis convention in
September 1786, the delegates did agree to a second convention in
Philadelphia ``. . . to devise such further provisions
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as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the
federal government adequate to the exigencies of the union.'' The
potential radical thrust of this proposal suggests that the gradual
strategy of reform had collapsed, and that many of those present had
turned to a desperate maneuver after having exhausted all other
measures. Among those present were Hamilton and Madison.
Yet, up until the winter of 1786-1787, when the Shays' Rebellion took
place, the Founding Fathers did not suggest that the Philadelphia
convention should address anything other than the conspicuous failings
of the Articles.
However, events in Massachusetts in the winter of 1786-1787 cast the
problems of the nation in more comprehensible terms. Shays' Rebellion
began as a protest by Massachusetts farmers laboring under heavy state
taxation and private debt. Led by Daniel Shays, a veteran of the
Revolution, an armed mob of two thousand men marched on the federal
arsenal in Springfield, Massachusetts, and closed the county courts to
halt creditors from foreclosing on any more farms. The State Militia
quelled the uprising, but the news of the event left the rest of the
country shaken. The Massachusetts state constitution was widely
considered the most balanced of the revolutionary charters. If the
Massachusetts state government could not protect the property of its
citizens, one of the most fundamental aims of Republican government,
how could the less balanced state and national governments endure if
such unrest spread?
As Minister to France in 1787, Thomas Jefferson dismissed Shays'
Rebellion. ``A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,'' he
wrote James Madison on January 30, 1787, ``and as necessary in the
political world as storms in the physical.'' Madison was hardly
inclined to agree. As he examined the ``vices of the political system
of the United States'' in the early months of 1787, he became convinced
that the agenda of the upcoming convention should not be limited to the
failings of the Articles. The time had come to undo the damages caused
by the excesses of republicanism.
But, consider for a moment the odds that were against the delegates
in crafting a workable government. The record of reform was hardly
encouraging. The states had taken more than three years to ratify the
Articles, and in the six years since, not one amendment that Congress
had proposed to the states had been approved. There was also the
question of whether the Congress should endorse the Philadelphia
convention. By 1787, its reputation had fallen so low that it was
unclear whether its endorsement would aid or kill reform efforts.
Moreover, the convention had to attract an impressive array of legal
minds to lend validity to whatever document would be produced. Yet,
there was little guarantee that the convention would muster such
persons. Even George Washington, who among all others probably most
recognized the need for the convention, was hesitant to attend for fear
that his reputation would suffer if the convention should fail. He
accepted the invitation reluctantly at the urging of Madison, and even
then, not until the last minute. But, perhaps more importantly, the
Articles never provided for such a device of amending the
Confederation, which caused many in Congress to question the propriety
of the convention. After all, if the conventional delegates did produce
a revised document, would it be considered law if the Articles never
allowed for a constitutional convention in the first place?
In the face of these obstacles, any proposal put forth by the Framers
would have to be more complex than that of simply shifting the powers
of taxation and regulation of commerce from the state governments to a
national government. Because the state governments were already
entrenched, it was unlikely that the states would agree to the creation
of a powerful central government at the expense of their self-governing
authority. Granting the states specific self-governing powers and
rights was not only politically expedient, but also served the Framers'
intent to limit the central government's authority. The sharing of
power between the states and the national government was one more
structural check in what was to be an elaborate governmental scheme of
checks and balances. The Framers further decentralized authority
through a separation of powers, which distributed the business of
government among three separate branches.
This ensured against the creation of too strong a national government
capable of overpowering the individual state governments.
In a seemingly paradoxical fashion, governmental powers and
responsibilities were also intentionally shared among the separate
branches. Congressional authority to enact laws can be checked by an
executive veto, which in turn can be overridden by a two-thirds
majority vote in both houses; the President serves as commander-in-
chief, but only the Congress has the authority to raise and support an
army, and to declare war; the President has the power to appoint
ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme
Court, and all other officers of the United States, but only by and
with the advice and consent of the Senate; and the Supreme Court has
final authority to strike down both legislative and presidential acts
as unconstitutional. This balancing of power is intended to ensure that
no one branch grows too powerful and dominates the national government.
What happened in Philadelphia was then truly remarkable. Committed at
first to limiting executive power by making state legislatures supreme,
Americans created a constitution that provided for an independent
executive branch and a balanced government. Committed at first to
preserving the sovereignty of states, Americans drafted a constitution
that established a national government with authority that was
independent of the states.
So each of the two--the National Government and the State
governments--was supreme in its own sphere and, yet, separate, in a
sense, and overlapping.
Doubtful at first that a strong national republic was possible,
Americans created a strong national republic that still endures.
``The real wonder,'' James Madison wrote in Federalist Number 37,
``is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and
surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have
been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on
this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is
impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a
finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally
extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.''
There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional
Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens
asking what sort of government the delegates had created. ``A republic,
Madame,'' he answered, ``if you can keep it.'' Characteristic of
Franklin's statements, we should not allow the brevity of his response
to undervalue its essential meaning: it is not enough that democratic
republics are founded on the consent of the people; they are also
absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the
people.
Yet, opinion polls show that Americans have either never read the
Constitution or have forgotten most of what they learned about it in
school. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are the
common bonds that unite the nation because they articulate our
political, moral, and spiritual values. To a degree Americans recognize
the ideologies of liberty and freedom that are contained in these
documents, but we should also recognize that these beliefs were shaped
by the political climate in large part in which they occurred. Too
often these ideals are used as catch phrases to describe the founding
documents which can obscure the complex political processes that
produced both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The
post-Revolutionary era provides Americans with perhaps the clearest
examples of why the Constitution is so vital to the stability of the
country and the protection of our most basic freedoms. It is critical
that we reaffirm our knowledge of these events to preserve, in
Madison's own words, ``. . . that veneration which time bestows on
everything, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments
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would not possess the requisite stability.''
Those words can be found in the Federalist No. 49, by James Madison.
In closing, let me refer back to something I said earlier when I said
that it is not enough that democratic republics are founded on the
consent of the people; they are absolutely dependent upon the active
and informed involvement of the people.
In this regard, the American people will shortly be called upon to be
involved. There is a national election coming. Elections will occur in
every State. I think it is very appropriate, if I may, to state those
words again.
It is not enough that democratic republics are founded on the consent
of the people; they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and
informed involvement of the people.
It is a disgrace, if we look at the record of the voter turnout in
this country, the American people, it seems to me, are less and less
involved when it comes to voting. Fewer and fewer of the people
exercise this right--this duty. This is a foremost duty of American
citizenship. Fewer people are involved.
I close with this reference to history.
In 1776, in September, George Washington asked for a volunteer to go
behind the British lines and draw pictures and develop information with
respect to the placement of the British guns, their breastworks, their
fortifications, and to bring that information back to the American
lines. A young man by the name of Nathan Hale responded to the call. He
was a schoolteacher. He went behind the British lines. This was an
exceedingly dangerous assignment.
Nathan Hale achieved his purpose, but on the night before he was to
return to the American lines, he was discovered by the British to be an
American spy. The papers, the drawings, were upon his person. The next
morning, September 22, 1776--224 years ago today--he stood before the
hastily built gallows. He saw just before him the crude wooden coffin
in which his body would soon be laid. He asked for a Bible. The request
was denied. Whether or not the British at that point had a Bible near,
we don't know. But there he stood with his hands tied behind him.
The British commander, whose name was Cunningham, asked Hale if he
had anything to say. His last words, which are remembered by every
schoolchild in America who has had the opportunity to read American
history, were these: I only regret that I have but one life to lose for
my country.
The British commander said: ``String the rebel up''.
Nathan Hale gave his one life for his country.
My final question is this: If Nathan Hale was willing to give his
only life--all he had--for his country, why is every American,
Republican or Democrat or Independent, not willing to give his one vote
for his country?
I yield the floor.
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