We Are One. Until We’re Not
The United States almost didn’t happen. Even before the Revolutionary War was won, a brutal internal political battle had already begun, with the very existence of the new nation hanging in the balance.
A good number of Americans know the substance of this famous debate. But millions of others don’t. And possessing this knowledge right now – at this specific time in our country’s history – is as important as it’s ever been.
On September 17, 1787, the final day of the Constitutional Convention, the oldest delegate of the 55 was one of the last to be heard. Benjamin Franklin, 81 years of age, handed his closing speech to his Pennsylvania delegate, James Wilson, to be read aloud. Franklin’s remarks in full were even shorter than the article you’re reading. A Founding Father who had helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence, Franklin’s first words were a bit of a curve ball:
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 obliged, 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.
As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, that opening paragraph is still awe-inspiring in its simple and profound wisdom. (You can read the rest here.) Today you might call it “reverse psychology,” but there is little doubt that Franklin meant every word of it. As one of the Federalists of that time, along with John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, he favored a strong central government and passage of the Constitution to create it.
At the same time, all the Founders knew that they were on the precipice of taking a big risk by establishing an executive authority and placing so much power in one person. By dictionary definition, the words president and king are quite different. But definitions are not people. The person matters, and when you invest so much power in any one human being, anything can happen. The colonists who made up the colonies of the American Revolution had sacrificed more than 25,000 lives in their epic defeat of the Brits; they were extremely hesitant to create any form of “nation” that risked giving up the personal freedom they had achieved.
In the earliest days of public office in the colonies, and then the states, elected leaders’ terms usually lasted just a year. Another way of saying it is that they had to be reelected every year. That sounds impractical by today’s standards – but these young states wanted to err on the side of safety. The less power, the better. And that spirit was the backbone of the Anti-Federalists, those colonial leaders who disapproved of a Constitution because it created an executive branch without an immediate bill of individual rights attached.
This was the raging debate stretching across all the colonies a quarter of a millennium ago. The stakes were stratospherically high. Families were tested. Friendships were frayed. Debate boiled over into terrifically angry argument. This may sound familiar …
The debate was so fraught that a set of 85 essays, known as The Federalist Papers, was published to frame the debate. Primarily written by Alexander Hamilton, the essays were an intellectual defense of the Constitution. But The Federalist Papers themselves didn’t persuade Anti-Federalists to take new positions. Then, as now, people’s opinions are deep-seated. It’s hard for human beings to change our minds on deeply held political beliefs.
And that’s what made Franklin’s speech such a brilliant punctuation mark to the convention’s debate. He wasn’t saying that he undoubtedly knew that the new Constitution would work, or that he didn’t have fears about a potentially rogue executive branch. What he was saying, and especially in the following passage, was that Americans would be wise to stick together:
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.
E pluribus unum. The whole of us creates far more strength than the individual parts.
As well, because our Founders wanted the people to be directly represented, they created and designated Congress as the First Branch of the Constitution. In Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s words from the majority opinion last week, he affirmed that very principle:
Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions.
It’s obligatory when discussing those momentous days to include the reminder that equality in America was not afforded to all during that era we revere. The indescribable brutality of slavery still has repercussions 250 years later.
But it should also be pointed out that while it took far too long for women’s rights and civil rights to be passed into law, the very idea of individual freedom and separation from oppressive authorities – a monarch and a church – is what seeded the ground in North America for future measures of increasing equality.
Tuesday’s State of the Union address will be broadcast to the world tonight. The most powerful leader on the planet will speak uninterrupted about what his political party stands for. To an even greater degree, he will sell his own accomplishments and announce what he intends to do as president for the foreseeable future.
Because I oppose most of what this president has done, and because of my low opinion of him as a human being, his SOTU addresses are hard for me to get though. But I’ll do it anyway. I’ll watch because I’m an American, and no matter what my perspective on what’s happening at this moment in our country’s history, I still think it wise to keep an open mind and look at the bigger picture. As Franklin advised.
We are one. Until we’re not.