WEBVTT - How America's First Constitution Failed 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.480 And we continue with our American stories. And up next, 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.579 one of our favorite types of stories, a story about 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:19.950 American history. And all of our history stories are brought 0:00:19.970 --> 0:00:23.009 to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. And 0:00:23.050 --> 0:00:25.690 you can go to hillsdale.edu to sign up for their 0:00:25.750 --> 0:00:27.970 free and terrific online courses. 0:00:28.410 --> 0:00:29.290 That's hillsdale.edu. 0:00:30.990 --> 0:00:34.350 Before the Constitution that we know today was ratified, the 0:00:34.390 --> 0:00:38.690 United States governing document was the Articles of Confederation. Here 0:00:38.710 --> 0:00:40.729 to tell the story about how we got from that 0:00:40.790 --> 0:00:45.629 document to our Constitution is Dr. Larry Arnn, president of 0:00:45.700 --> 0:00:48.330 Hillsdale College, and our own Monty Montgomery. 0:00:48.659 --> 0:00:50.059 A graduate of the college. 0:00:50.500 --> 0:00:51.420 Take it away, Dr. 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:51.780 Arnn. 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:58.020 The story of the American Revolution, the story of American 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.590 history is important. One of the most remarkable stories in 0:01:01.630 --> 0:01:06.250 human history. We came here from nowhere. We settled a continent. 0:01:06.390 --> 0:01:10.250 We extended freedom across the whole continent. All that, you know, 0:01:10.270 --> 0:01:12.370 it's a really amazing story. But this revolution is a 0:01:12.410 --> 0:01:13.550 really great story, too. 0:01:14.250 --> 0:01:17.680 And the story of the revolution begins like this. 0:01:19.780 --> 0:01:24.959 State legislatures under the British crown were the most democratic 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:28.240 system of government ever practiced in the world. for about 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:31.860 150 years. It grew over that time. And so they 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:34.680 all had, you know, they had their identities. They were not, 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:38.030 by the way, separate. They were united by the British crown. 0:01:38.420 --> 0:01:42.230 But they didn't have to work together. And the British 0:01:42.270 --> 0:01:43.690 government took care of foreign policy. 0:01:44.550 --> 0:01:48.650 And the British, managing the colony's foreign policy, would get 0:01:48.690 --> 0:01:52.490 themselves involved in the French and Indian War, which Britain 0:01:52.510 --> 0:01:56.390 would win. But with victory came debt. 0:01:57.700 --> 0:02:01.150 The British, flushed with victory, decide we've just spent a 0:02:01.140 --> 0:02:04.550 lot of money on those colonies, and so we're going 0:02:04.570 --> 0:02:10.590 to tax them and regulate them, get some advantage from them. Well, 0:02:11.270 --> 0:02:14.869 that was 150 years too late, because these people were 0:02:14.930 --> 0:02:18.239 used to running their own business. And that's how the 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:23.040 American Revolution started. It really started in 1763. It went 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:27.980 in stages. People just started communicating different. They started writing 0:02:28.020 --> 0:02:31.560 to each other more and different kinds of things across 0:02:31.620 --> 0:02:34.480 state lines and cities. And Boston was a hot seat, 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.080 but the rest of the country was very involved. And 0:02:38.100 --> 0:02:43.090 then finally they sent delegates to a legislative body called 0:02:43.110 --> 0:02:47.630 the Continental Congress. And this Continental Congress, they wrote and 0:02:47.669 --> 0:02:48.870 adopted a constitution. 0:02:49.630 --> 0:02:51.250 The Articles of Confederation. 0:02:52.470 --> 0:02:58.210 The Articles of Confederation leave the states in near total power. 0:02:59.270 --> 0:03:03.169 But it's also called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. 0:03:03.850 --> 0:03:04.350 Perpetual. 0:03:06.070 --> 0:03:08.980 So it had become a country. You know, so it's 0:03:09.060 --> 0:03:12.920 charged now with waging a war for the birth of 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:15.860 the nation. And so the Articles provided that there was 0:03:15.900 --> 0:03:19.140 no real executive branch, that Congress would pick somebody to 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:23.780 run the government. Most things required nine states to agree. 0:03:24.330 --> 0:03:27.919 Out of 13, that meant supermajority. That made it hard 0:03:27.940 --> 0:03:32.429 to agree about anything. And some things required unanimity. And 0:03:32.650 --> 0:03:34.750 they didn't have any power to get any money except 0:03:34.790 --> 0:03:37.610 by asking the states. And, you know, with the best 0:03:37.670 --> 0:03:40.580 will in the world, if you don't really have to 0:03:40.940 --> 0:03:42.220 send the money, will you? 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:44.880 You know, and they didn't. 0:03:47.220 --> 0:03:49.200 I mean, it got so bad that in the last 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.430 year of the war... There was a big meeting of 0:03:51.470 --> 0:03:54.120 the Continental Army. By the way, it's really cool that 0:03:54.140 --> 0:03:57.120 George Washington named the army the Continental Army, because at 0:03:57.140 --> 0:03:59.080 the time he did that, he didn't know how big 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.640 the continent was. And he actually never lived to see, 0:04:02.820 --> 0:04:05.530 to hear the knowledge of how big it was, because 0:04:05.690 --> 0:04:08.410 Lewis and Clark was about six years after he died. 0:04:09.350 --> 0:04:13.250 And so they had a big meeting in Newburgh, and 0:04:13.290 --> 0:04:17.050 they had this cockamamie plan. They were going to pick 0:04:17.130 --> 0:04:20.950 up and go out west, and start over, and leave 0:04:21.010 --> 0:04:24.250 these idiots to their own devices. Because we have won 0:04:24.270 --> 0:04:28.610 the war against the greatest power on Earth, having started 0:04:28.970 --> 0:04:32.909 with not only no army, but no large military experience 0:04:33.010 --> 0:04:36.450 anywhere in America. And we've won this war, and they 0:04:36.490 --> 0:04:40.770 won't pay us. So they just didn't get paid, you know? 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.420 So the best plan they came up with was, let's 0:04:44.460 --> 0:04:46.820 just march out west and leave them to their own devices. 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:49.980 You know, they had a justice on their side, but 0:04:50.020 --> 0:04:53.140 it's also a little bit like a petulant child. And 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:57.839 George Washington corrected that. He went there. He wasn't invited. 0:04:58.560 --> 0:04:59.210 He heard about it. 0:04:59.990 --> 0:05:02.289 And the one thing you couldn't do by this time 0:05:02.370 --> 0:05:04.770 and for the rest of his life was have a 0:05:04.830 --> 0:05:07.510 fight in public with George Washington because he was just 0:05:07.810 --> 0:05:11.620 so great. So he intervened. First, he moved the meeting 0:05:11.700 --> 0:05:14.419 to a different time. And then he showed up and 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:16.920 walked up there to make a speech. It's a very 0:05:16.980 --> 0:05:19.920 affecting speech. It's the one where he takes out his 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:24.310 spectacles and said, excuse me, he says, I've grown old 0:05:24.450 --> 0:05:29.310 serving with you. And then he makes himself their servant, 0:05:29.550 --> 0:05:34.109 George Washington's way. He says, in this matter of your pay, 0:05:34.130 --> 0:05:38.500 I will be your servant. See, and George Washington wasn't 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:44.460 getting paid. So that shows the weakness of the government 0:05:44.790 --> 0:05:46.730 under the Articles of Confederation. 0:05:48.690 --> 0:05:53.210 The Articles of Confederation were failing, and soon prominent thinkers 0:05:53.250 --> 0:05:56.549 such as James Madison were writing that change needed to happen, 0:05:57.370 --> 0:05:58.450 and happen fast. 0:05:59.310 --> 0:06:01.650 He writes an essay called The Vices of the Political 0:06:01.690 --> 0:06:04.570 System of the United States. So this vices of the 0:06:04.589 --> 0:06:09.010 political system just names what's wrong. We can't pay our bills. 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:12.860 We can't keep the peace. There are riots all over 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.250 the country. The British are all over our soil and 0:06:16.270 --> 0:06:19.210 we can't get them off. And they just scoff at us, 0:06:19.270 --> 0:06:19.849 their armies. 0:06:20.620 --> 0:06:23.580 We're afraid to go near them. And so this ain't working. 0:06:24.180 --> 0:06:29.300 Those factors led a group of people and it was widespread. 0:06:29.940 --> 0:06:32.099 All of the states sent somebody. Not all of them 0:06:32.220 --> 0:06:34.540 remained to the end, but all of them sent somebody 0:06:35.339 --> 0:06:39.760 to figure out how to revise the Articles of Confederation. 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:44.470 That's what the Constitution was called for. But to bring 0:06:44.550 --> 0:06:48.270 states to the table to discuss it, they needed Washington. 0:06:48.910 --> 0:06:52.730 Well, Madison and Hamilton had Washington persuaded to go. But 0:06:52.770 --> 0:06:55.530 Washington was so honorable that his sense of honor could 0:06:55.550 --> 0:06:58.810 get in his way. And there were articles in the 0:06:58.850 --> 0:07:03.420 paper saying that the Society of the Cincinnati, you know, 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:07.659 which exists in America today, it's the society of the now, 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:11.300 the descendants of people who fought in the Revolutionary War. And, 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:14.800 you know, it's named after a Roman statesman who was 0:07:14.860 --> 0:07:18.160 famous for resigning his commission and returning to private life 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:21.480 every time he won a war. And so they styled 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.310 themselves after this man. But then people got the false 0:07:24.380 --> 0:07:30.690 idea that it was an emerging aristocracy. And Washington was 0:07:30.970 --> 0:07:33.330 embarrassed by that because he hated the idea of that, 0:07:33.390 --> 0:07:37.310 as he would later prove. And so he decided not 0:07:37.350 --> 0:07:41.300 to go to a convention of the Cincinnati. But then 0:07:41.340 --> 0:07:45.100 he decided, if I go to the Constitutional Convention... it'll 0:07:45.140 --> 0:07:47.580 be in the papers and it will be apparent that 0:07:47.660 --> 0:07:52.080 I have snubbed my fellow officers in the Cincinnati. So 0:07:52.900 --> 0:07:57.150 my personal situation prevents my attendance. And, you know, Madison 0:07:57.570 --> 0:08:00.170 reads that and he gets on his horse and he 0:08:00.210 --> 0:08:02.950 goes to Mount Vernon. And, you know, he goes that day. 0:08:03.350 --> 0:08:05.430 I got to go talk to that guy because we 0:08:05.450 --> 0:08:08.810 can't do it without him, see. And he talks him 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.100 into it. We don't know exactly what arguments he used, 0:08:11.140 --> 0:08:14.630 but he knows after that visit, Washington returned to the 0:08:14.710 --> 0:08:19.510 idea of going. And, you know, Washington was a very 0:08:19.650 --> 0:08:23.590 shrewd man. He's a tremendous judge of men and things. 0:08:24.770 --> 0:08:28.570 He was not, let's say, expansive in his eloquence. In 0:08:28.590 --> 0:08:32.840 the Constitutional Convention, he said one thing. But he's sitting 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.480 up there at the front. And the one thing he 0:08:35.540 --> 0:08:39.760 said was he offered toward the end a mild correction. 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:42.880 Brooke Heiser wrote a good book about Washington. It's short, too, 0:08:42.940 --> 0:08:46.680 called Founding Father. It's a very good book. And he 0:08:46.740 --> 0:08:50.160 says in that book that the nature of what Washington 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.160 had to say emphasized the point that there's not much 0:08:53.220 --> 0:08:56.540 wrong with this document. But, of course, they're designing a 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:02.290 strong executive in that convention. And that was controversial because 0:09:02.330 --> 0:09:04.950 they'd just been fighting the king. The fact that Washington 0:09:04.970 --> 0:09:08.850 was sitting up there and everybody just knew that Whatever 0:09:08.910 --> 0:09:12.170 the executive is, he's sitting right there. And, you know, 0:09:12.210 --> 0:09:15.450 he ran twice unopposed because you couldn't oppose him. 0:09:15.470 --> 0:09:20.550 Washington could have been made a king. But he wasn't, 0:09:21.429 --> 0:09:24.000 even though there were forces asking him to be made one. 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:25.859 There was a different fella. 0:09:26.260 --> 0:09:30.270 He was circulating the letter, let's make Washington king. And, 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:32.300 of course, they're, you know, they're like we are today. 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:33.860 A lot of us, we don't know what to do. 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:35.600 Is the whole regime going to change? 0:09:35.700 --> 0:09:35.860 Maybe. 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:35.980 Maybe. 0:09:37.330 --> 0:09:42.010 And Washington intervened to denounce that idea, strongly, to that 0:09:42.100 --> 0:09:44.200 particular soldier and to others. 0:09:45.100 --> 0:09:47.760 In the end, it was Washington that helped hold together 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:50.740 our newly formed nation and bring about a better rule 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:54.949 of law through example. But Madison actually made the gears 0:09:55.010 --> 0:09:59.230 turn and wrote the best reasoning for our Constitution replacing 0:09:59.370 --> 0:10:03.820 the Articles of Confederation. Here's what Madison had to say. 0:10:05.940 --> 0:10:08.840 What is government but the profoundest of all commentaries on 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:13.190 human nature? If men were angels, no government would be needed. 0:10:13.870 --> 0:10:17.650 If angels were to govern men, neither internal nor external 0:10:17.710 --> 0:10:21.459 controls on the government would be necessary. Now, that's a 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.579 piece of beautiful logic that is, by the way, undeniable. 0:10:26.620 --> 0:10:30.800 And it justifies the Constitution of the United States in 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:32.099 two sentences. 0:10:38.620 --> 0:10:41.260 The story of the journey from the Articles of Confederation 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:45.490 to the Constitution told by Dr. Larry Arnn here on 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:46.949 Our American Stories.