Why America Needed The Constitution (A Brief History Lesson)

Nearly 250 years ago, beginning in the 1760's, American colonists experienced the first signs of monarchical power exerted against them with King George III's Proclamation of 1763. The king's proclamation stipulated that American settlers who had established land claims west of the Appalachians were not only violating English law, but would have to return to the eastern side of the mountain range or risk arrest. This law was followed in short order by a series of increasingly oppressive acts of Parliament, including the following:

• The Sugar Act of 1764, enacted as a substantial increase in the duty on the importation by England of sugar, coffee, wine, textiles, and indigo, as well as outlawing altogether the importation of rum and French wines. The Sugar Act was intended as a way of raising revenue to help offset the costs of the recently concluded Seven Years' War with France, otherwise known as the French & Indian War in colonial America;
• The Stamp Act of 1765, which is the first tax targeted directly at America by her mother country, taxing nearly all printed materials from newspapers to contracts.
• The Quartering Act of 1765, which required Americans to provide food and lodging to British troops who were being sent to occupy what the Parliament and the king felt were intransigent colonies--particularly the Massachusetts Bay colony and its largest city of Boston.
• The Declatory Act of 1766 which states that only the British government has the power to enact laws governing the American colonies.
• The Townshend Acts of 1767, which imposed taxes on paper, glass, lead--and tea. This last tax would be formally affirmed by the Tea Act of 1773.

As the king and the Parliament exerted increasing pressure to impose the will of the British government on the people of American colonies, the people reacted with increasing indignation. James Otis in 1764 was the first to utter the famous objection that these acts were inherently unfair because they represented "taxation without representation". Later, Samuel Adams--a cousin of John Adams--led the Sons of Liberty in rallies and public meetings to protest the increasing weight of oppression on the people of Massachusetts and her sister colonies.

Now skip ahead to a period some twenty years later. The Colonials have defeated the British Crown in the Revolutionary War and have gained their freedom. But it's one thing to win one's freedom; it is quite another to actually form a stable government that serves the people. America's first attempt, in fact, was acknowledged as an abject failure. The Articles of Confederation, enacted in 1781, established a weak central government that was soon recognized to be wholly inadequate to serve the young nation. And so, during the miraculous summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, a Constitutional Convention was called and was convened on 25 May 1787. 

During that hot summer, nearly all of the giants of the colonial era--including Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, and Franklin (Thomas Jefferson would undoubtedly have been there except that he was serving as America's emissary to France at the time)--joined with other icons of the Revolutionary era to propose, debate, study, and ultimately forge what Gladstone would call "the most wonderful work ever struck by the brain and purpose of man".

With a crippling war in their rear view mirror--and with fresh memories of what oppression felt like when the British government levied taxes and enacted laws which increasingly restricted their individual freedoms--the Framers of the Constitution began by boldly claiming that the Constitution represented "the people of the United States", and that the people would form a republican government based on representative democracy. The Founders framed the new government with a series of checks and balances, designed to limit power in any one branch so that the pursuits of life, liberty and happiness would be less likely to be breached by a strong and overbearing central power such as they had seen embodied in King George. How were these checks and balances established?

Consider the following:

• The executive branch could propose--but could not enact--laws to govern the people. The passage of laws rested solely in the legislative branch. That said, the new law only became official when it was signed by the President. If the executive branch (embodied in the President) felt that a law had been passed too rashly, the executive had the power to veto a bill passed by the legislature and send it back to the legislative branch for reconsideration. The legislative branch could either revise the law so that it was palatable to the President and enable him to sign it, or it could override the President's veto--but only by a two-thirds supermajority of both houses of the legislature.
• The legislative branch itself was imbued with a series of checks and balances. Contrary to the original government established under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress consisted of two legislative bodies--the House of Representatives which were elected every two years and the Senate, whose members were elected every six years. These two bodies would by design also serve to check each other. The House (what is commonly referred to today as "Congress") was designed to be closer to the will of the people because it was subject to re-election much more often; the Senate, on the other hand, was designed to be more deliberative, less subject to hot issues which might die down over time. Only the House had (and has) the power to originate bills for raising revenue. Only the Senate has the power to confirm senior members of the executive branch (such as cabinet members) or nominees to the judicial branch (otherwise known as the Supreme Court and the federal court system). Only the House can vote articles of impeachment against a President; only the Senate can actually take testimony and try to President to determine if the President is convicted of those articles voted by the House and is therefore removed from office. The Senate also has the power to ratify treaties. Importantly, the legislative branch (both houses) has the power (not the President) to declare war on a foreign power.
• The judicial branch does not have the power to make laws, which power expressly resides--as stated above--in the legislative branch. The judicial branch does not have the power to raise revenue, declare war, ratify treaties, or any of the other duties of the legislative branch. Its purpose is to determine whether laws passed by the Congress and signed by the President conform to the Constitution. 
• But what about laws which might be written a century or two or three later which the Constitution might not expressly speak to? Or what if the Constitution needed to be changed to more accurately reflect the values of the people of a modern nation? The Founders provided for that, too--in the form of the Amendment process. This rigorous process requires that two-thirds of both houses of Congress--followed by the ratification of three-quarters of the states--can amend the Constitution. To affirm how difficult this is to do, consider that it's only been done 27 times since 1788--and the first ten of those in the form of the Bill Of Rights were passed in 1789 and ratified in 1791.

The clear intent of the Founding Fathers--and their collective brilliance--is seen in the Separation of Powers, designed solely to limit the size, scope, reach, and--ultimately--the power of the federal government. Many of the men who debated the Constitution during the summer of 1787 had fought against the oppression of British king. All of them had sacrificed their livelihoods, their treasure, and risked their lives for the liberties so eloquently proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. When the Constitution was adopted on 17 September 1787, the Founders believed they had bequeathed to the young nation a structure designed to elevate liberty for its people, and for generations of Americans to come.

In the years to come (as we shall see), those liberties seemed only to increase in the form of Amendments to the Constitution. In the next post, we'll review the ways liberty increased during the 19th century. In a later post, we'll see how freedom was chipped away beginning in the early part of the 20th century, and how this phenomenon has gained great momentum in the past forty years or so.