Beau Breslin - A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nations Fundamental Law

A CONSTITUTION FOR THE LIVING

Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nations Fundamental Law

BEAU BRESLIN

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

2021 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Breslin, Beau, 1966 author.

Title: A constitution for the living : imagining how five generations of Americans would rewrite the nations fundamental law / Beau Breslin.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020035299 (print) | LCCN 2020035300 (ebook) | ISBN 9780804776707 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503627543 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Constitutional historyUnited States. | Constitutional lawUnited States. | Imaginary histories. | LCGFT: Counterfactual histories.

Classification: LCC KF4541 .B74 2021 (print) | LCC KF4541 (ebook) | DDC 342.7302/9dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035299

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035300

Cover design: Rob Ehle & Kevin Barrett Kane

Cover image: First page of the US Constitution, via Wikimedia Commons

Text design: Kevin Barrett Kane

Typeset at Stanford University Press in 11/14.4 New Baskerville

To Martha and Molly, with enduring love.

Contents

It is no small thing to build a new world.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

The people themselves must be the ultimate makers of their own Constitution.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Preface

There comes a point in the self-guided tour of the National Constitution Center, Americas first (and only) museum devoted entirely to the U.S. Constitution, where the hairs of every American citizen ought to stand up. This point, which arrives at the end of an outing to the Philadelphia museum, should stir the emotions. To put it mildly, there is real wonder in the moment. It marks a potentially transcendent experience, one that in the most literal sense does not come along every day. It taps into the intellectual in all of us, and it forces us to contemplate one of the most critical challenges we face as citizens of this nation. Yet most Americans have absolutely no idea what they are experiencing.

The moment occurs when one enters Signers Hall, the room at the end of the tour, which is filled with life-sized bronze statues of all the delegates to the federal Constitutional Convention. One enters the room and is literally confronted by the Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin is there, sitting at a table, cane in hand. So is James Madison, who stands behind a second table, seemingly watching over all the proceedings. George Washington, at six foot three, towers over the other constitutional signers and, indeed, most of the museums visitors as well. Alexander Hamilton (whose radical ideas were about as popular as he was) stands, fittingly, alone in the center of the room. Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson, John Dickinson, and all the rest of those who framed Americas fundamental law are positioned throughout the space. Even the three delegates who refused to sign the constitutional textGeorge Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusettsare present in the room, though they are decidedly on the periphery. The room itself is also a fitting shrine to Americas most important constitution-makers. Its dimensions are identical to the original space used for the drafting and signing of the Constitutionthe Assembly Room in Independence Hall that stands just two blocks down the road. The ceiling is high in Signers Hall; the walls are adorned with stately bookshelves, and the lighting is such that the atmosphere is both somber and celebratory.

Yet it isnt the objects in the room or the room itself that should stir the soul. The private emotion one feels in Signers Hall is not necessarily about reverence for the Constitution and what it has come to represent or for the individuals who drafted the text over 230 years ago. Rather, the sensation citizens experience in that room should come from the active role they are asked to play in that moment. Each visitor to that room is invited to either endorse or renounce the Constitutionto either ratify or reject the countrys most important public document. Think about that. Visitors to the museum are being asked to consider whether they, like the figures in the room, would sign the Constitution. We are constitutional Founders at that particular moment.

Although some would argue that the stakes for us as visitors in Signers Hall are much lower than the ones confronting the founding generation, I disagree. We are in essence replicating the actions of the first Federalists and the anti-Federalists through the self-conscious act of placing our names on paper. We are figurative members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, or at least of the state Ratifying Conventions, when we decide whether we still believe in the promises and the power of our governing constitutional charter. In that instant, we can pretend to be the eighteenth-century merchant who endorsed the Constitution because he believed increased economic stability would come from a greater concentration of power in the federal government, or instead, we can imagine ourselves as the early American farmer who rejected the Constitution because he believed in the small-scale republicanism that characterized political society under the Articles of Confederation. We can pretend to be those early American citizens at the same time that we remain twenty-first-century citizens wrestling with our own perspectives on the continued worth of the constitutional document. While thinking about the narrative of Americas constitutional experience through the ebbs and flows of history, we can simultaneously be the contemporary craftsperson, or nurse, or mechanic, or lawyer who is convinced that the Constitution no longer reflects the true complexities of a modern American state and the current teacher who does. We can be the supporter who insists the Constitution is the greatest political invention in history and the member of a minority or marginalized group whose experience of living under the Constitution has not been so positive. The point is, our active involvement in the ratification or rejection of the Constitution demands our focused attention and our most contemplative skills. It asks us to decide what we truly think of the Constitutionwhether we are prepared to ratify the text or notand then to seal that decision with our signature. The moment is pregnant with imagination and significance.

Today, the process is entirely electronic. One signs (or refuses to sign) a computer tablet, and the signature temporarily appears in the on-screen replica of the Constitution, alongside the original Framers signatures. Its a neat and technologically sophisticated process. More importantly, one is making a political commitment, much like taking an oath in that it requires an assertive act: (re)affirming ones fidelity to the original constitutional instrument by [in effect] placing pen to paper (parchment?), and publicly acknowledging acceptance. Of course, visitors are not without a choice at this moment. Though the museums preference is clearly that visitors will endorse the Constitutionin fact, the statue of Abraham Baldwin of Georgia, complete with quill pen in hand, has been cast in such a way that he is pointing directly to the place to sign the Constitutionguests can walk away from ratification.