Carol Berkin - A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution

To the "Sunday Morning Dissertation Salon"
Angelo Angelis, Kathy Feeley, and Cindy Lobel

Copyright 2002 by Carol Berkin

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berkin, Carol.

A brilliant solution: inventing the American Constitution/Carol Berkin.1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-15-100948-1 ISBN 0-15-602872-7 (pbk.)

1. United States. Constitutional Convention (1787) 2. United StatesPolitics and government17831789. 3. StatesmenUnited StatesHistory18th century. 4. United States. ConstitutionSigners. 5. Constitutional historyUnited States. I. Title.

E303.B47 2002
973.3'18dc21 2002005648

Text set in Adobe Caslon
Designed by Linda Lockowitz

Printed in the United States of America

First Harvest edition 2003
A C E G I K J H F D B

T HE GENESIS OF THIS BOOK lies in two national crises: the first, a challenge to the peaceful transition of power in the White House; the second, a challenge to the security of our nation. These two crisesthe disputed presidential election of 2000 and the bombing of the Pentagon and the World Trade Centermade me realize that, after thirty years as a historian, I begin every struggle to understand the present with a search of the past.

On November 7, 2000, with winter's chill already in the air, Americans across the country went to the polls to cast their vote for the new president of the United States. While the ballot they encountered contained choices on state or local officials and perhaps referendums on local issues, these were overshadowed by the choice of a new occupant of the Oval Office. Whether they went to bed early or stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, most voters expected that they would know the name of their next president on the following day. There was, after all, a vast network of television and radio stations, news services, poll takers and statisticians, computer experts and "number crunchers," not to mention current and former politicians drafted by the media working around the clock to provide commentary and make predictions about the outcome of the election. Albert Gore or George W. BushAmericans would learn the name of the victor over their morning coffee.

It was not so. For weeks, indeed months, what will surely become the most celebrated disputed election in presidential history dragged on. Accusations and counteraccusations of fraud, deception, mechanical error, and human error raged around the votes cast in the state of Florida, and a new term"the chad"entered the American vocabulary. The battle was waged in the courts and in the media rather than in the military or the streets, reflecting perfectly the political culture of the nation. In the end, the Supreme Court played a role in settling the dispute. The true victory, most commentators and political figures agreed, was the fact that the American Constitution had come through yet another trial by fire and a peaceful transition of power had been achieved. But the true lesson seemed to be that the presidency was the only prize worth winning.

O N S EPTEMBER 11, 2001, on a beautiful sunny day in New York City, two planes, commandeered by terrorists, struck and destroyed the World Trade Center. To the south, in Washington, D.C., a third plane crashed into the Pentagon, sending smoke billowing into the sky within sight of the White House. To many Americans, this attack on their own soil seemed like a dream, or, more properly, a nightmarethe reality of it took days, perhaps weeks to sink in.

We, as a nation, were dazed and shakenbut we looked with considerable confidence to the national government, and especially to the president, to direct our response to the crisis. That response came quickly. Military jet fighters raced to provide protection for the president of the United States. The vice president was taken to safety as well. At the same time, diplomats moved to secure cooperation from other nations, wielding the great influence and power of the United States to prompt this cooperation, even before any policy regarding the terrorists was firmly in place. Congress members and senators took up critical issues, debating and passing emergency relief funding for New York City, aid packages for domestic industries, and changes in law enforcement restrictions, and sending them to the president for his approval. Government officials quickly took advantage of the media that brought news, commentary, and discussion into the homes of virtually every American. President Bush soon appeared on television, speaking directly to the nation and the world. And over the ensuing days and weeks, the president, as the leader of the national government, set out the official policy that would be pursued in dealing with the terrorist threat at home and abroad. Within days billions of dollars worth of military equipment and thousands of military personnel were deployed for a war against the terrorists responsible for the attacks and those who harbored them. In the simple caption "America Strikes Back," the dominance of the United States in world affairs was affirmed.

F OR A HISTORIAN , the need to put current events in historical perspective is an occupational hazard. But these two crises seemed to provoke a similar need in others. Since November 2000 scores of network anchormen and women, radio talk show hosts, my own college and graduate students, and neighbors I have encountered in the supermarket have asked me the same question that I have asked myself: What would the founding fathers think of these events? Any answer, no matter how expert the historian, could only be conjecture. But the question prompted me to set down answers to other questions that might help Americans gain the historical perspective they seemed to be seeking. What political crises had the founding fathers faced, and how did they react to them? What problems did they hope to solve when they met and drafted a new constitution in the summer of 1787? What role did they envision for the president and for other branches of the government in times of calm or crisis? What dangers did they think lay ahead for their nation?

The image of the United States, and of its government, projected in the election crisis and the terrorist attacks makes the leap across the centuries to 1787 a difficult one. It takes a conscious act of imagination to see America through the eyes of its founding fathersand to share their perspective may be disturbing. These men inhabited a world alien to modern Americans, a world in which the United States was a fragile, uncertain experiment, a newcomer, and to some degree a beggar at the gates of power and prestige among nations. In 1787 our treasury was empty. Debts to foreign governments and debts to our own citizens could not be paid, and this was a blow to the nation's honor as well as to its future credit. Everywhere these men looked, anarchy seemed to threaten, for the Revolution had unleashed new expectations and a new rhetoric of equality and political participation. These new ideas threatened a social revolution that would destroy not only their own fortunes but also the rule of law. All around them civil strife seemed to be erupting unchecked, and news of uprisings in western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts during the previous year shook the confidence not only of these wealthy men but also of Americans of all social classes. With no police force of any sort, military or civil, the restoration of law and order was in doubt. Even worse, a political disorder on the highest levels had reached critical proportions. The cooperation among the states, forged in the 1770s and sustained during the war, had vanished with independence. Competition and exploitation reigned, and the revival of a fierce localism pitted Virginian against Marylander, New Yorker against New Jerseyite, Georgian against South Carolinian. And while state governments vied with one another, the "league of friendship" called the Confederation that Americans had established as their first national government grew more impotent, more lethargic, and more incompetent with every passing day. The nation was on the verge of self-destructionor, worse, of simply fading away. Not a few French and English officials in America predicted that soon enough this upstart experiment in republicanism would come to an end.