One of its goals, obviously, was to cement the union of the former colonies, now states. The new constitution was an improvement in that sense on the country's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, drawn up during the War for Independence. The Articles gave the states too much power and the central government too little. But the improvement made by the new constitution didn't prevent the secession of eleven "Confederate States" in 1860-61, leading to a bloody civil war, and 600,000 battle deaths.
The main reason for that tragedy was the failure of the Founding Fathers to solve the problem of slavery. Many of them were disturbed by the existence of slavery in a country that famously proclaimed human equality and liberty in its Declaration of Independence. But nearly half of the delegates also "owned" people, including George Washington and James Madison, who wrote the first drafts of the Constitution. Their handling the slave issue reminds one of St. Augustine's oft-quoted line, "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet."
The framers agreed to end the African slave trade, but not until 1807. The horrors of the Middle Passage continued legally for twenty more years, and to some extent illegally afterwards. A fugitive "labor" clause required that the enslaved who escaped to another state must be returned their "rightful owners." The words "slave" and "slavery" were not used in the Constitution. The framers avoided them, believing that they would sully the document. But what was there was sullying enough.
The infamous 3/5ths clause allowed states to count the enslaved as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of representation, a concession that gave the southern states more representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College than they should have had. Thus the legitimacy of slavery was enshrined into the Constitution and the spread of slavery into new states became a contentious issue until the Civil War.
Democracy was another thorny issue the makers of the Constitution had to confront. They wanted to prevent it, not promote it. They feared it. Democracy, they believed, led to chaos, tyranny, and expropriation of the wealthy (people like themselves).
The Constitution they designed contained several sections designed to minimize popular influence in politics. It provided that Senators be elected by state legislatures, and that presidents be elected by an "Electoral College" chosen by the same bodies. Voters chose the members of the House of Representatives, but who were the voters?
All of the states placed various restrictions on voting such as poll taxes or literacy tests. Women were excluded from voting until 1919. The enslaved could technically vote after 1865, but were often prevented legally and illegally from exercising it for nearly a century afterwards.
Many of the anti-democratic provisions of 1787 such as those above have been reversed by amendments to the Constitution. But not entirely. All eligible voters can now vote for president. But it is not the popular vote that decides the winner: It's the undemocratic Electoral College of 1787. Twice in this young century the winner of the popular vote has failed to win the presidency.
Senators, too, are now elected by popular vote. But the Senate remains a fundamentally undemocratic body. The Constitution provided that each state could elect two senators. That was a concession to the smaller states, who feared being dominated by the larger ones if the Senate was based on population, as the House of Representatives was. Thus, we have the absurdity that Wyoming with a little over 500,000 people, and California with 39 million, both elect two senators.
The House of Representatives is theoretically democratic, but the distribution of House seats is often skewed undemocratically by gerrymandering the borders of electoral districts. This done by the parties who control the state legislatures. Various attempts to restrict certain voters from voting make things even worse.
The opposition to the Trump presidency stresses its commitment to "Save Democracy." I fully support that. But we should acknowledge that we are working with an imperfect constitution, and its imperfections have paved the way for an aspiring fascist dictatorship. We should be calling for a movement to "Create Democracy."
In 1787 a member of the public allegedly asked delegate Ben Franklin what the framers had created. "A republic, if you can keep it," Franklin replied. Notably, Franklin did not say a "democracy." Today, we should be saying that our goal is "a democracy, if we can make it."
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