Our Founding Fathers…They Got It Right

If you want to build a structure or a building or anything that will endure then you must start with a foundation. The foundation is what your finished product will rest upon. If the foundation is not right then everything that is built upon it will not be right or true. The foundation must be strong, strong in the materials, usually concrete or steel. The foundation must support and hold the great weight and stress that is placed upon it and to be able to withstand unforeseen forces like severe weather, flooding, high winds or even earthquake activity. The foundation must be true, meaning all sides should be level and square and plumb. If the foundation is as much as a half inch to three quarters off then by the time the roof is to be framed it could be off by several feet and nothing will be square. Similarly, just like having a physical foundation of concrete and steel our nations founders also needed a solid foundation in forming the United States of America. This foundation would be made of ideas, principles and precepts that would be just like concrete and steel. The founders would form the foundation for a new nation whose governance would be truly unique. This would be an enormous undertaking that would require great skill and sacrifice by its builders. To design a foundation that would sustain the full weight of its inhabitants and prevail against all the seen and unforeseen forces that would attack and erode it over time. There would be generations of Americans whose lives that would depend on that foundation. The founders would have to draw from all their experiences and resources that they could find. The oppressing, overtaxing, monarchical laws of the current government had brought them to a culmination of thought that their everyday routine life could no longer go on as it was and the possibility of confrontation or conflict was becoming unavoidable. How would they construct a government that would serve the people, yet not be their master and avoid the current predicament they were in? How would they balance the power between the colonies? Would there be a strong central government or a weaker one? The form of government would have to stand the test of time and withstand all forces that would come against it for one common cause…to allow its citizens with their unalienable rights to live freely in their daily pursuits without much interference from their government overburdening them or enslaving them. So began the endless days of painstaking debates with careful consideration to different ideas and opinions. The sleepless nights, the thinking, the pondering on what to do. The asking and praying for wisdom and insight intuition. The many hours and days of selfless sacrifice and searching their hearts to their core beliefs all to reach a common cause… To give the people freedom from tyranny and oppression. As they debated the various issues time began to work against them. There were many nuances, many rabbit trails to endure, all of these needed careful deliberation but the delegates had reached a point of total frustration. Tempers and the art of debate were growing dangerously shorter with each passing day and hour. Not everything could be worked out in a way that was agreed to by all, the complexities of many issues were too great. Two of the biggest issues of the Constitutional convention in 1787 that were threatening the very existence and future of the colonies was the regulation of commerce , and how the colonies would be represented in the House and Senate. Each state would have two representatives in the Senate, but the number of representatives in the House would be determined by the population of each state. Determining the population brought in the question of whether that would include the population of slaves. Were the slaves to be counted as “property” or were they to be counted as “persons” and citizens? Some of the northern delegates argued “no “saying the slaves were “property” and not citizens because they knew the southern slaveholders would increase in political power. The southern delegates said “yes” because the labor of the slave was like the labor of the free person which contributed to the success and prosperity of the colony. Clearly, many of the northern and southern delegates were more concerned with how the question of counting the populations of slaves affected them politically and financially instead of on the basis of moral implications. This point was made even further, when the northern and southern delegates argued the complete opposite views four years earlier in 1783 during the second Continental congress meeting on the articles of confederation. This is where the 3/5 compromise came about. At issue, was whether the slaves should be counted as part of the population for finding the formula of how much each state would have to pay to the treasury(still in its infancy) to help manage federal spending and insure economic prosperity. This time the northern states delegates said “ yes” the slaves should be counted as part of the population because slave labor is productive and any comparison should show that (the northern delegates knew that the southern states would have to pay more in taxes). But “ no” said the southern states delegates the slaves are “property” and not productive as free people (obviously not wanting to pay more in taxes).    The reality was in 1787 that time and tempers were growing short and hard work, slavery and financial prosperity were interwoven like a strong rope a chord that could not be cut at the time without jeopardizing the future of the nation. There was a very real fear of the southern delegates breaking away from forming the United States and the union dissolving into chaos. So the founders made a decision to compromise on the issue of slavery in a practical sense( to facilitate the formation of the United States) but certainly not in a moral sense. This is the reason the word “slave” is not mentioned in the Constitution but the word ” person” is used instead. There was simply not any moral authority from those who formed the Constitution for slavery. Those who profess that the Constitution was pro slavery and the founders were racist avoid logical reasoning that the word slave would have been inked into the very wording of our Constitution. If the Constitution was pro slavery then the word” slave” would have been used with abandon. If the Constitution was for slavery then why would it have been necessary for the Confederate Constitution to have been written 74 years later in 1861? In the Confederate Constitution the delegates of the Confederacy inserted the word “slave” into their Constitution and specifically allowed the “ right of property” in slaves for their owners thereby justifying the concept of slavery. Fredrick Douglas ( a former slave who escaped) made theses same observations . Douglas, a black man who himself went through the hell of slavery and escaped its bonds, then educated himself and became an abolitionist, who at first thought our Constitution to be pro slavery but upon further study understood it to be an anti-slavery document. He wrote “ It (the Constitution) was purposely framed as to give no claim of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government it was on the scaffolding to the magnificent structure to be removed as soon as the building was completed. ” Fredrick Douglas also gave a brilliant speech in 1860 in Glasgow Scotland titled “the Constitution of the United States: is it pro slavery or antislavery?” In that speech he said that “ I have much confidence in the instincts of slaveholders. They see that the Constitution will afford slavery no protection when it shall cease to be administered by slaveholders. They see more over that if there is once a will in the people of America to abolish slavery there is no word, no syllable in the Constitution to forbid that result.” He understood that the founders laid the correct foundation needed to put an end to the hell that was slavery and said “I would act for the abolition of slavery through the government- not over its ruins.” The founders were not perfect men by any means and were not infallible to corruption but if these men were all racists which is the current indoctrination being taught in our schools and universities then our charters of freedom ( the Constitution , the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights ) would of never been conceived. Furthermore, two points of context need to be made for that time period. First, the concept of freedom that we enjoy today was not envisioned when the founders convened in 1787. The world existed in what some historians would describe as “ involuntary bondage or servitude .”People lived in bondage to other people of all races, creeds, colors and religions. This was accepted and was considered for the most part, uncontroversial. The concept the founders were attempting to create was visionary. There would be an unobtrusive form of government that would create an environment of personal and economic freedom tied into ownership of property with the umbrella of safety not yet experienced in the known world. This concept arising from the believe that our inalienable rights come from our Creator and the practice of these rights could be freely done by its citizens in safety under protection of a limited, restrained  government. The second and most crucial point is that slavery in America and the rest of the world was colorblind. It wasn’t about black or white. People owned and enslaved other people and it didn’t matter what nationality, race, color, or religion you were. Whites enslaved other whites, blacks enslaved other blacks, whites enslaved blacks and blacks enslaved whites. There were other nationalities that enslaved other nationalities and before America was settled Native American Indians practiced slavery on other Native American Indians. This has been well documented and written about but it is doubtful this is being taught or discussed in any schools or universities today. Instead, we hear the constant narrative of  the founders were all racist  slave owners and they were protecting the institution of slavery. Slavery was and still is about human greed and profit and it was practiced by people of all colors, races, nationalities and religions. This was simply a way of life throughout the world. Human bondage, human slavery and servitude barely pricked the human conscious. It wasn’t until the ideas ,principles and precepts set forth in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights raised the human conscious to the awareness that one human being owning and enslaving another human was unacceptable and morally wrong. Fredrick Douglas trusted the instincts of slaveholders after coming through his own hell of being a slave and then coming to the realization that the founding documents were the correct foundation needed to put the institution of slavery on the path to extinction. Many of the founders also believed in their heart of hearts that the foundation they had laid written in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights was the seed that would eventually germinate in the hearts of citizens and take root to produce the change needed to end slavery. It turns out the founders were right and the hearts of the citizens began to slowly change.  After much bloodshed and loss of life in a four year long civil war with devastating economic destruction the institution of slavery ended in the United States of America. The scale of the new Federal Constitutional Republic which had tipped to the side of the consent of the governed (and the tolerance of slavery) finally tipped back to the side of the truth that all men are created equal ( eventually ending slavery ) thus achieving the balance necessary for a representative self government . The founders did get our form of government right and the institution of slavery ended in the United States.  Sadly, today human greed and the lust for profit continues to thrive in the human heart and slavery continues to exist in many nations around the world. Modern slavery is a multibillion dollar industry. The Global Slavery Index in 2018 estimated that around 40  million people are currently caught in the trade of modern slavery.                                             Kevin Smith onemansamerica.com