The Outlook: Uncle Sam's Place and Prospects in International Politics

by Newton Macmillan

Far be it from me to breathe disrespect for a document so respectable, but there can be no treason in pointing out the perfectly obvious fact that no constitution, and especially no written constitution, can be stronger than the men who made it; it cannot be—it is not—so strong as the men for whom it is made, because in them is vested the power to amend or even to annul it.

The fathers of the Republic were wise in their generation; rarely, if ever, has a country been so blessed in the character of its founders as ours. But they were human, and hence fallible; mere men, and therefore not endowed with the gift of prophecy. They themselves would have been the first to disclaim such an attribute. They drafted a constitution admirably suited for the needs of thirteen colonies stretched along the Atlantic coast, recently liberated by the bravery of their own citizens from the tyranny of a stupid and stiff-necked English monarch and ministry. And then, proud, serene and happy in the consciousness of duty well done, they were gathered to the bosom of their fathers.

The fathers and founders died, but the Republic lived on. Year by year it grew and waxed greater. No student of our history need be told that every instance of expansion of our territory presented unsolved problems beyond the apparent scope of the parchment constitution; or that as each of these occasions arose, arose also a party to declare that the constitution could not be stretched to meet the demand. Yet the growth continued and the constitution survived.

I do not presume to read the constitution of the United States for this or any other audience—that is a work beyond my powers, and, I apprehend, beyond those of many who consider themselves of the "constitutional party." But there may be instruction in recalling a few of the instances in our history in which the constitutionally impossible has been nevertheless accomplished, and that, too, without harm to the Republic.

Thomas Jefferson, being a democrat and "strict constructionist," demanded an amendment to the constitution to confirm the Louisiana purchase; but not, it will be remembered, until after the purchase had been made, constitution or no constitution.

Andrew Jackson, another democrat, has never been rebuked by posterity for marching into Florida, arresting and hanging Ambuster and his fellow spies on what was then Spanish territory; yet in so doing President Jackson thrust his hob-nailed Tennessee boots clean through the sacred parchment. It has been well said that success is an unwritten law seldom reversed by the courts. Certainly neither the courts nor Jackson's fellow strict-constructionists have ever rebuked him for the "unconstitutional act."

Passing over the Mexican war and the acquisition of Texas, California and New Mexico, a series of acts very damaging to the dignity of the constitution, let us come at one step to the most conspicuous breach of the constitution in all our history—the War of the Rebellion.

There is not a line in the constitution expressly permitting the secession of a state, though so eminent an authority as the late Judge Thomas M. Cooley, himself a Northerner and a Union man of undoubted loyalty, plainly intimates in his "Constitutional Limitations" that at least historical precedent was on the side of secession. But neither is there authority in the constitution for the invasion of a state by the federal army, unless at the request of the state authorities; yet the Southern states seceded, and President Lincoln marched the Northern armies whithersoever secession and rebellion showed their heads. Still more recently, President Cleveland sent federal troops into Illinois to quell riotous strikers, against the protest of the Governor; yet posterity sustains both presidents in their acts—perhaps even thanks them for the precedent—whatever the cost to the constitution.

As for the repression of the rebellion, posterity, including many of the seceding "strict constructionists," now concede that equity, common sense and the instinct of self-preservation amply justified any possible breach of the constitution committed for the preservation of the Union. A federation of states holding together only at the will of all its component parts would hardly have been worth saving; so that if the constitution was on the side of the seceders, why—so much the worse for the constitution.

It was during the War of the Rebellion, too, that a legislature of Virginia met in Alexandria and passed a law cutting the state in two, to erect the new state of West Virginia. Now, article 4, section 3, of the United States constitution expressly declares that "no state shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state, nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned and of the Congress." Yet the state of West Virginia is a historical, political and geographical fact, notwithstanding that the precedent thus established is a dangerous one, and the division wrought great injustice to the Old Dominion in throwing upon her shoulders the entire debt of the original state. Here was not only a violation of the constitution, but a "historical crime;" yet both constitution and the crime remain to vex the souls of the strict constructionists and to remind us all how weak a thing is any constitution when it blocks the way of a popular demand.