That’s why the Preamble begins with “We the People,” not “We the States.”īut the Preamble papered over the fact that there was fierce if gentlemanly debate in the ratifying conventions about just how much power the allegedly sovereign, independent states would enjoy under the proposed Constitution. Only after nine of the ratifying conventions signed off on the Constitution did it go into effect. Rather, each state called a separate, single-purpose ratifying convention whose delegates were elected by a special procedure. When the Constitutional Convention finished its work, the document circulated around among the states, but not for their legislatures to ratify. It was ratified in the states but not by the states. But it’s hard to believe that he didn’t know he was egregiously misreading the Constitution. Jefferson had his reasons, which I won’t bore you with, for writing his resolutions. Seven states thought Jefferson’s handiwork so incendiary that they adopted resolutions rejecting it, prophetically, as an incitement to disorder and even civil war.
When Jefferson pitched his resolutions to all the other states, he got no takers except for Virginia. It’s non-binding, because there’s no “common judge” to ensure that all the parties abide by the treaty’s terms. “Powers” each having an equal right to judge whether the others are living up to the terms of the pact are sovereign states that have entered into a non-binding treaty with one another. Here, let him tell it: After saying that the Constitution is a “compact” among the “several States,” he wraps up with, “…as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.” In other words, he thought the Constitution, like the Articles, was a treaty among sovereign countries, sort of a mutual defense pact. What’s important for this story is that they made clear that he saw the Constitution as just an updated version of the Articles of Confederation. Instead it tossed them out and started over.Ībout 10 years later, Thomas Jefferson invited the Kentucky Legislature to sign off on a bunch of resolutions he’d written. So unstable was that arrangement that the 1787 Constitutional Convention went beyond its charge from Congress just to tweak the Articles.
#Figleaf athens free
Right up front, the document makes clear that it’s nothing more than a treaty among friendly countries, each of which is its own final judge of whether the other parties are living up to the deal and is free to withdraw from it any time. Right after the first article names the country that it establishes as “The United States of America,” the very next article basically cancels “united.” It says, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” Whether they could tell you the story that I’m going to, there were people who came to Bobby Lee’s defense in Charlottesville who’ve bought into a dumbed down version of it.
Wait, don’t check Facebook! We need to understand this because, believe it or not, there are still people out there who’ve never reconciled to the “more perfect union” promised by the Constitution and see the states’ place in our federal system in Articles of Confederation terms. Constitution, there were the Articles of Confederation. If slavery is America’s original sin, buried deep in our political DNA is the states’ rights fig leaf for the armed defense of it. Now the air is thick with denunciations of similar monuments for valorizing traitors, and defenses of them for celebrating “heritage, not hate.” How can we still be doing this? Why do we keep re-enacting ancient conflicts seemingly without end? The proximate trigger for the recent mayhem in Charlottesville, VA and elsewhere was the city’s plan to remove a monument to Robert E.
Yet again, over 150 years after Appomattox, we’re still at one another’s throats about the meaning of the horrendous bloodletting that ended with a half-page of surrender terms and a handshake.