American History in the Secondary School
ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, PH.D., Editor
THE CONSTITUTION—ITS ANTECEDENTS, ITS FORMATION, AND ITS ADOPTION.
The study of the Constitution of the United States involves two more or less distinct processes. If the student is to comprehend it perfectly, he must consider it, first, as an historical document, studying its antecedents, the process of its creation, and the method of its adoption; second, he must consider it as it exists at present, the ground plan upon which our national institutions have been reared, and under which the Government of the United States is still being operated.
A generation ago the opinion was almost universally received that our present constitution was the result of the superhuman skill of the two or three score men who sat and deliberated in the State House in Philadelphia from May 25th to September 17th, 1787. Even Gladstone, whose knowledge of history and politics should have taught him better, seems to have lent himself to this theory, for in contrasting the English and the American Constitutions, he declares that, “As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” To-day this theory has been entirely abandoned. For this reason, the student must be brought to consider the Constitution as an historical as well as a political document, seeking its origins in the institutions of England and the English colonies, acquainting himself with the personality and the theories of the men who sat in the Convention, following the debates and the newspaper discussions which in every State were the preliminary steps to its ratification.
For the boys and girls who have studied their English history and their Colonial history with care and intelligence, only a brief review of the antecedents of the Constitution will be necessary. Nevertheless, this review should not be neglected. Once more the teacher should insist upon the fact that the roots of American civil and political institutions are to be found in English soil. Transplanted to America in the seventeenth century, these institutions were affected and modified by local conditions, but in their origin they were essentially English. The study of the Constitution should therefore begin with a brief reconsideration of the English system of government, its origin and development, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Far more important than the system of government, however, was the system of law and the theory of the right of the individual to freedom from unjust impositions by the government which the colonists inherited from the mother country. Not until the student is able to state again, and accurately, the fundamental principles of Magna Carta, of the Petition of Rights and of the Bill of Rights should the teacher proceed to the consideration of other subjects, for the very language of these documents will appear again in the first nine amendments to our present Constitution.
Next, the teacher should review with his students the history of the establishment of the various groups of colonies, their forms of government, the various methods of colonial legislative, executive, and judicial procedure, the rights and duties of the governor, the method of election and the powers and functions of both houses of the colonial assemblies, the rights and duties of the judiciary: one and all, these served as models which were freely studied and adopted by the members of the Constitutional Convention.
Most important of all precedents, however, were the colonial forms of union. Beginning with the process of amalgamation which is to be observed in the history of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, proceeding through the history of the New England Confederation, “a consociation for mutual help and strength in all their future concernments,” through the history of the Albany Plan, the acts of the Stamp Act Congress, the Committees of Correspondence, the Continental Congress, and the Articles of Confederation, the student should be made to see that the Constitution of the United States is but the last step in a century and a half of political development. In the Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England (Article 8), for instance, is to be found the germ of the constitutional provision for mutual rights of citizenship and for the return of fugitive slaves and criminals. In the Albany Plan we find at least two provisions which in later days were to be incorporated in the Federal Constitution: (1) that a single officer should be charged with the general administration of the affairs of the union, and (2) that representation should be proportional, not equal, among the members of the union.
The study of the Articles of Confederation should, of course, be thorough and exhaustive. Too many teachers are content to leave their pupils with a hazy notion of the form of government submitted to the States in 1777 and finally adopted in 1781. Because so much is regularly said about the defects of the Articles, so much about the perfection of the Constitution, the teacher must be warned and warned again against the almost universal custom of belittling the importance of this instrument of government. With all its imperfections, it is nevertheless true, considering the troublous times during which it was in operation, and the spirit of separatism which existed among the States, that this earliest bond of union among the States served as a strong link without which the present Constitution would never have come into existence. Under these Articles, the States severally entered into “a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare.” They guaranteed that “the free inhabitants of each of these States ... shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States”; “that full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, etc., of every other State.” The provisions of the Articles concerning the three departments of government should also receive careful attention, especially the executive and judicial departments, because it is here that most high school students are left with exceedingly vague and inaccurate conceptions. A thorough analysis of the document will show that while there were abortive provisions for the creation of a separate executive and an attempt to establish a limited national judicial department, all real power was vested in the Congress. Congress gathered to itself all the active functions of government, and yet even it could take no definite action unless the delegates from at least nine of the States consented, and none of its acts could be enforced except through the good will and the active coöperation of the separate States. In these two circumstances and in one other, namely: that Congress had no power to regulate interstate commerce, lay the serious, the fatal weakness of the Articles of Confederation. Nor did there seem to be any way of remedying conditions, for no amendment could be made to the Articles unless every State consented. Three times the attempt was made, but each time it failed, and the experiment of a union among the States seemed doomed to failure.
Then, in 1786, upon the invitation of Virginia, delegates from five of the States met at Annapolis to consider the subject of interstate trade without consulting the members of Congress. Instead of taking any action, however, this convention issued an address to the States inviting them to send delegates to a convention to meet in Philadelphia May, 1787, “to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” Though many States still hesitated, as a result of this address, delegates from all the States except Rhode Island met at the appointed time in what came to be known as the Constitutional Convention.
Having led his pupils thus far in the study of the history of the Constitution, the teacher is now prepared to discuss with them the second stage of its story. First he will need to insist, and that unrelentingly, that they become acquainted with the names and the personality of at least the most prominent members of the Convention: Washington and Madison and Randolph, from Virginia; Franklin and Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, from Pennsylvania; Hamilton and Lansing, from New York; Gerry and King, from Massachusetts; Ellsworth and Sherman, from Connecticut; the two Pinckneys, from South Carolina; and Patterson, from New Jersey. The personality of these men, their plans and preparations, are all of profound importance; each contributed something, positive or negative, to the new instrument of government.
The history of the convention itself falls roughly into three stages: during the first month the delegates were busy presenting their plans of union, each party attempting to enforce its will upon the minds of the others. Then followed a month during which the parties gradually came to an agreement, each waiving some of the things which it regarded as essential in return for concessions upon the part of the others. Finally, during the third month, though the debates still went on, they were occupied mainly with the settlement of details, none of which was of primary importance. If this threefold division of the work of the Convention is kept in mind, the teacher will find it comparatively easy to bring order out of the apparent chaos of the deliberations of the three and a half months’ session at Philadelphia.
Taking each period in its order, we find that during the first month there were two radically opposed opinions in the Convention. On the one hand, were those who believed that a strong central government should be established; on the other, those who believed that all that was necessary or proper was that the Articles of Confederation should be amended by giving to Congress more power, and by creating a strong executive and a judicial department. The plans of the first party were set forth in the Virginia Plan, which was probably drawn up by Madison and presented to the Convention by Randolph; those of the other in the New Jersey Plan, which was presented by Patterson. Each of these plans should be carefully and thoroughly studied. Beside them, the student will do well to acquaint himself also with the proposals laid before the Convention by Hamilton and by Pinckney.
After a month of debating propositions and counter-propositions, the differences narrowed themselves down to the single question of what should be the method of representation in Congress. For a time it seemed as though no agreement could be reached upon this subject. Then came the compromise offered by Ellsworth and Sherman, of Connecticut, which the Convention finally adopted—the first great compromise of the Constitution. Next followed the debate between the Northern States and the Southern States upon the question as to what should be the basis of representation. This, too, was finally settled by what is known as the second compromise of the Constitution. Finally there remains to be studied the debates over the questions of the slave trade, and foreign and interstate commerce. Here again the Convention divided on sectional lines, till the difference was settled by the third great compromise of the Constitution.
Now the Convention entered upon its third stage. Debates and differences of opinion were still frequent, but they related almost entirely to questions of detail, not to fundamental principles, so that by September 17th the Convention was able to adjourn after having transmitted the Constitution to the Congress of the Confederation for action.
With the work of the Convention behind us, there remains the third stage of the history of the Constitution to be studied. Instead of acting finally upon the document, after a brief period of deliberation, Congress on September 29th submitted it to the States for ratification. This ratification was not accomplished without difficulty. Opposition to the new form of government was active, often virulent. The grounds for this opposition should be carefully studied. Unless we understand it clearly, we shall be in no position to understand the basis of the constitutional strife which raged in the United States for the next seventy years, which culminated when the eleven Southern States finally seceded from the Union. The objection to the new Constitution was based first upon the feeling that the central government outlined in the Constitution was too strong and would ultimately overshadow and destroy the State governments; second, upon the fact that the Constitution contained no Bill of Rights, and that therefore the sacred rights of the people for which they had fought in the Revolution might be interfered with. The first objection was finally overcome by the argument and by the feeling among the people that life in America would soon be impossible unless a stronger federal government than then existed could be established; the second, by the promise that a series of amendments embodying the principles known as the Bill of Rights would speedily be adopted. Thus the Constitution was finally ratified, and in April, 1789, the new government went into operation.
The further history of the Constitution belongs to a later period of American history and is therefore outside the limits of this article. It remains only, then, to indicate to the teacher the sources where he may profitably seek further information on this subject. For the story of the development of the English Constitution, specific references can hardly be given, any one of the half dozen standard text-books on English history should be adequate for the study of this subject. The three great charters of English liberty may be found in any of the source books of English history, such as, for instance, Kendall’s or Colby’s or Lee’s; while, for the history of colonial institutions, the student is referred to the works on colonial history already mentioned in previous articles. The basis for the study of the work of the Convention is to be found (1) in the “Journal of the Convention,” published in Elliot’s “Debates,” and, especially, (2) in Madison’s “Notes,” which are much fuller and much more satisfactory. Of the secondary histories of the period, only some half dozen need be mentioned: (1) Fiske’s “Critical Period,” (2) Curtis’s “Constitutional History,” Vol. 1; (3) McLaughlin’s “The Confederation and the Constitution,” (4) Walker’s “Making of the Nation,” (5) Landon’s “Constitutional History,” and (6) Hart’s “Formation of the Union.” There are others, of course, but these are more than sufficient for the ordinary student.