Plain Honest Men

The Making of the American Constitution
Richard Beeman

The constitutional convention of 1787 was shrouded in secrecy. The delegates all agreed to talk to and write to no one about the proceedings. Notes taken during the convention were sparse, incomplete an unpublished. Somehow Richard Beenam has been able to piece together not just a book, but a thick tome, on the day by day proceedings at the Pennsylvania State House that resulted in the Constitution that the United States still operates under today.

America, under the articles of confederation, was a loose alliance of thirteen independent states that all agreed to be friends. The Congress, with an equal vote for each state, was responsible for paying off the debts incurred during the revolutionary war, but had no power to collect taxes and was dependent on the voluntary donation of funds from the states. The Congress was the only federal government there was. It comes as no surprise to us that this arrangement didn't work. A convention was authorized by the Congress to discuss amendments to the Articles of Confederation that would make for a more workable federal government. That convention, astoundingly, devised a plan that dissolved the confederation government, created a three branch system, including a two branched legislature, a judiciary and an executive, none of which bore any resemblance to the confederation Congress.

Beeman's book follows the proceedings of the convention in detail. He talks about the individuals who had the most influence over it's progress, George Washington, returned from retirement at his estate at Mount Vernon after leading the continental army to an improbable victory over the British, was elected president, or chairman of the convention. Benjamin Franklin, internationally renowned as a "naturalist," which is what scientists were called and as a statesman, James Madison, who came prepared with a plan for a new government, the "Virginia Plan," which became the foundation of the new constitution, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Pinkney, Eldredge Gerry, to whom we owe the word Gerrymander, Gouverneur Morris, James McHenry, the person fort McHenry is named after . . .

Beeman does a pretty good job of explaining how the convention dealt with, and failed to deal with the most controversial issue addressed by the constitution - slavery. The delegates from South Carolina and Georgia were adamant that slavery be protected by the constitution. At the time it was just beginning to become an issue. Franklin was president of an abolitionist society in Pennsylvania. Slavery was practiced in most of the states, including Massachusetts and New York. Pennsylvania did not abolish slavery until 1847. But in South Carolina and Georgia, slavery was the only way to acquire to kind of labor needed to work the expanding rice and indigo which were making the landowners rich. There was almost no objection to slavery on moral grounds at the convention but much wrangling over the attempt to count slaves in determining representation in Congress. In the end slaves were counted as 2/3 of a person each for the purpose of assigning Congressional representation. It is difficult to understand this compromise, which led eventually to the Civil War, from a 21st century perspective. I take it as proof of the inevitability, like it or not, of moral relativism. You can not make moral choices outside of your cultural context, even if you think you can and think you are.

Founding Faith

Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America
Steven Waldman
Random House
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6437-3

Was the United States founded as a Christian Nation or did the founders intend to erect a strict barrier between church and state? Steven Waldman explores this question by examining the lives, work and writings of five of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Not surprisingly, Waldman discovers that the founding fathers disagreed with each other on the subject.

The chapters on Madison are the most enlightening. Madison was deeply involved in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, was the author of much of the Federalist Papers and, again was one of the authors of the bill of rights, including the first amendment and it's prohibition of the establishment of religion by Congress. His own view was that state support of religion weakened the church. Making the church lazy and dependent and making the people contemptuous of it. Madison felt that separating church and state made both stronger. Madison built an alliance between enlightenment intellectuals and evangelical Christians to gain votes to ratify the Constitution in Virginia. He promised those evangelicals a bill of rights which wold guarantee them freedom to worship as they pleased, in order to get their votes. It's almost as if James Dobson and Diane Rhem were to join in common cause to guarantee their Constitutional rights.

Evangelicals, at that time were worried that state support would go the the Episcopal Church and/or the Congregational Church, the two dominant denominations at the time. Such support did exist in most of the colonies and many of the new states. In Virginia, until the passage of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, the Church of England was supported by taxes, and until 1833 the Congregational Church was state supported in Massachusetts. It was not until the passage of the 14th amendment in 1868 that the provisions of the Bill of Rights applied to the states and not just the national government, thus making state support unconstitutional.

All of the founders studied in Waldman's book used conventional, nondenominational Christian language in letters and, four of them, officially as President of the United States. All of them had evolving sets of religious beliefs, none of which were particularly conventional. Jefferson and Adams became more and more Unitarian in their outlook. In fact the Congregational Church which Adams belonged to all his life, became officially Unitarian during his lifetime. Washington was a conventional Episcopalian in outward appearance but didn't attend very often. He believed that religion was needed in order to promote god behavior in the citizenry and appeared to be more concerned with outward appearance than inward salvation. Franklin postulated a supreme creator who delegated each solar system to an attentive subordinate gods. Franklin would fit right in in California. Madison mostly kept quiet about his personal faith but was comfortable with Baptists, Unitarians and Jews as well as the Episcopalians and Congregationalists who dominated the scene at the time. He wanted them all to be independent and self supporting. He even got along with the Catholics, who were almost universally hated in eighteenth century America.

The term "Wall of separation between church and state" was coined by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to a Baptist coalition in Connecticut, who wanted Jefferson's help in ending the state funding of Congregationalism there. The letter was meant to reassure them of Jefferson's support for their cause. How deliciously ironic that the descendants of those Baptists now deny the existence of such a wall.

Six Frigates

The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy
Ian W. Toll
W.W. Norton & Company
ISBN-13: 978-0-393-05847-5
ISBN-10: 0-393-05847-6

The US Ambassador to the Central Africa Republic excitedly posted on the Fender Discussion Page, www.fenderforum.com , about this book, which had been given to him by a retired Royal Navy officer. Thanks, DiploStrat, for turning me on to this one. There are lessons that we should learn from this narrative, as there are in every era of history. For one thing, Britain was a superpower – Britania Rules the waves and all that – and was quite arrogant in regard to it’s treatment of the ships and sailors of other nations, particularly the United States, “pressing” sailors into the Royal Navy, i.e. kidnapping them, whenever it suited. What’s the use of being a superpower if you can’t throw your weight around, right? Well It turns out that a smallish country at the edge of the known universe can become a royal PIA to a superpower without having to come anywhere near matching that superpower’s military might. The US managed to annoy Britain to exhaustion, for a second time, in the war of 1812.

Then there is the opposition of the Republicans (Democrats) in the US to wasting money on such a superfluous thing as a navy. American commercial shipping was growing by leaps and bounds and had no protection against pirates, privateers or arrogant naval officers. Congress finally agreed to build six frigates in 1794 after the Tripoli reneged on the protection agreement that the US had bought from them, pillaged an American ship and held it’s crew for ransom. Colonel Khaddaffi’s predecessor in Tripoli didn’t get his comeuppance until 1805, though, what with cost overruns, schedule delays, change orders, budget cuts and a small undeclared war with France.

Considerable attention is given, in the book, to the Presidential election of 1800, which made Harry and Louise and even the Willie Horton ads look pretty tame. It was the first time we actually had to chose between candidates in 1800 and there were no rules yet. It showed.

“Six Frigates” ranges over a lot of topics, Nelson’s victories at the Nile and Trafalger, Napoleon Bonepart and his wars in Europe, the Louisiana Purchase, Theodore Roosevelt’s study habits, (Teddy wrote a book on the war of 1812, standing up, while attending law school) and Winston Churchill, who said “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” It is well written, as readable as a novel and (don’t tell) educational. It isn’t just ships and cannons and whatnot, although buckles are swashed aplenty.