A few months ago, a friend gave me a 1,000-piece puzzle showing the Founding Fathers preparing the Declaration of Independence. I haven’t finished it yet – but it’s a picture of a brilliant group of people who would write the U.S. Constitution a decade later.
The recent rumble at the Capitol reminds us that to most Americans, this document seems eternal. It is the world’s oldest surviving written Constitution. Compare how in the 234 years since the Constitutional Convention was called, our oldest ally France has had
an absolute monarchy,
a constitutional monarchy,
a radical republic,
an oligarchic republic,
a dictatorship,
an empire,
a limited monarchy,
an empire,
a limited monarchy,
a republican monarchy,
a presidential republic,
an empire,
a parliamentary republic,
a pro-Nazi puppet republic,
a parliamentary republic, and
a presidential republic.
France may be an extreme case, but let me say right here and now that France has carried on quite well despite its constitutional chaos. Still, we are fortunate not to have had that. To understand why, you have to consider why the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in the first place.
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The reason was simple: The country was in a shambles. Our first “constitution” (yep – we’re on our second one!), known as the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, left each state a virtual independent country with the “United States” having no president, no court system, and no power to tax. For advocates of a limited central government, it was heaven.
For the country, it was hell. We could not resolve arguments with Britain or Spain because we had no military. Worse, domestic peace was wobbling. States were threatening war with each other. A rebellion in Massachusetts dragged on for six months without the federal government being able to assist. And in an incident that Hollywood could not have invented, in 1785 an angry mob of unpaid veterans stormed the then-capital of Philadelphia. The veterans entered the city on one side while Congress fled for its life out the other. (Lacking the power to tax, Congress could neither pay for security for itself or the back pay for the veterans). If nothing was done, the country could collapse.
So, the meeting began in Philadelphia, officially to “amend” the Articles of Confederation. The delegates amended them alright – straight into the trash can. Then, they wrote a new document, one that radically differed from the old one. A presidency was created. A supreme court was established. State sovereignty was abolished. The government remained limited, but many parts of the Constitution were written to give the government the power to oppose foreign as well as domestic misbehavior.
This the new document accomplished. A military establishment was created, and although its initial performance in the War of 1812 (1812-14/15) was abominable, it more than made up for that in the Mexican War (1846-47). A tax rebellion in Pennsylvania in 1794 and South Carolina’s attempt to “nullify” Federal law in 1832-33 were both suppressed by the mere threat of force. Several presidents were casual about their adherence to all the Constitutional details, but none threatened its fundamental functioning.
The Civil War was a different matter. However, the Confederacy’s constitution was very similar to the original, differing in only a few ways (such as its explicit language on preserving slavery and a single six-year term for the president).
The biggest potential challenge to the Constitution was the Great Depression. This cataclysmic economic disaster threatened the stability of the world, and in its results we can see why the Constitution has proved so durable.
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Consider: Between 1929 and 1932, industrial production fell 47 percent in both the United States and Germany. Unemployment in both countries surged to more than 25 percent, but there the similarities end.
In Germany, the crisis led to the rise of the Nazi party and, in 1933, the appointment of Adolf Hitler to head the German government. He would overthrow the existing republic and establish a dictatorship.
In the United States, the crisis led to the White House shifting from the Republicans to the Democrats. In fact, only one actual change was made to the Constitution as a result of the Great Depression: Prohibition was repealed. Americans remained loyal to the Constitution. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court by adding seats was soundly rejected. (To be fair, the Supreme Court, which had been finding Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation to be unconstitutional, had suddenly changed positions on this issue. In legal circles this is known as, “a switch in time saves nine.”)
So … why DOES the Constitution survive? I have three suggestions. First, the document was the result of a consensus reached in the 1780s that is still accepted: having a strong limited government, having that government divided into branches to prevent tyranny, having the states remain important entities and not just provinces of the whole, and recognizing that individuals have rights (hence the addition of the Bill of Rights in 1789-91).
Second, it has become a habit. Public officials and officers swear an oath to defend Constitution, as they have done for more than two centuries. Everybody with a career in politics or the military knows that they do not just serve a leader, or even a country. They also serve the country’s foundational document.
The third and maybe most vital reason is that our institutions, their validity, and their powers flow from the Constitution. This realization certainly influenced the vice president, the then-majority leader, the speaker, and the secretary of defense. If we search for reasons why the experiences of Germany and America were so different during the Great Depression, consider that the German Republic of that time was unpopular. It was established in the wake of, and therefore identified with, Germany’s defeat in World War I.
Large sectors of the German nation tolerated but did not really accept the Republic. And it was only 10 years old when the Great Depression hit. Its constitution had no particular hold on the German mind. The United States Constitution did – and does. America without its Constitution would cease to be America.
Hubert van Tuyll is an occasional contributor of news analysis for The Augusta Press. Reach him at hvantuyl@augusta.edu
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