The constitution has proved to be the foundation for one of the most successful governments in the world. Years of debate and compromise lead to the creation of this document that still holds our country together today. However, taking a detailed look in to the formulation of this document reveals some ugly contradictions and hidden breaches of humanity of our country's greatest authoritative power.
As the economic struggles of the United States became overwhelming evident in the late 1700's, a modification of the government was in order. This is because the articles of confederation gave the government no power to take any sort of action over its governing body. This is, however, the way it originally was intended to be. After being ruled by the british for so long, the people of the newly free colonies wanted to make sure they would never fall back in to the trap of monarchy again. With this new freedom, there were essentially no rules, and if there were, the government had no way of enforcing them. Stemming from this freedom, we can see how the institution of slavery had no way of being stopped. For just about ten years slave owners in the south made their living by relying on the free labor of slaves. A decade of slavery was more than long enough to create a system which could not exist without slavery as the driving force for its success. But as mentioned before, the articles of confederation was crumbling quickly beneath the feet of the thirteen colonies.
When the idea of creating a whole new government from scratch was introduced, chaos arose for many of the colonists. The drafting of a new government meant that the lifestyles of many americans could drastically change. For the first time in over ten years there would be an authority that had the power to enforce rules-- which after being subject to authority of the British for so many years, was not a popular idea with the people. Needless to say, Alexander Hamilton and other framers of the new government had a tough road ahead of them. Not only would the leaders of this new-forming government have to create a government from scratch, unanimity was required of all thirteen colonies in order for a change to occur under the articles.
If we fast forward to the Philadelphia convention (or the Constitutional Convention), it was an extremely delicate time for the country. After countless failed efforts to congregate to talk about this new government, leaders had finally agreed to meet to talk over the future of the country. At this time, leaders agreed that they must take advantage of this opportunity, which meant that compromise had to be made.
To get to the point, with slavery being the most essential part of the success of southern colonists, the idea of the abolition of slavery would have definitely scared off the southern colonies. Since every colony had to agree to ratify the constitution, this was one of the compromises that the government was forced to make in order to ratify the constitution. In a course of US politics that I am currently taking, this point is made evident in the document itself. The word slave, or ensalved cannot be found anywhere in the constitution, for this exact reason. Even though many believed that slavery was a horrible dehumanizing institution, they turned their heads and ignored it in order to create our government's foundation. This is where the contradictions begin to float to the surface.
A document and nation designed to be build on integrity, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness, finds its success based on the idea opposite of its most significant claim. Leaders of the country at the time of ratification had to decide between establishing the future of the country, or stopping the commodification of human beings. This was a choice that should have never existed in the first place. The reason that this decision exists, roots from the very first instance where a human, was no longer considered a human. Although leaders of the colonies at the time should never had made the compromise to allow slavery, the framers of the constitution didn't fail when the document was ratified, they failed the day that slavery began many years before. Because our government was so weak to begin with, and because we allowed slavery to be an institution for so long in the new world, our country was destined for years of a corrupt contradictory constitution from the beginning.
published by: Jonathan Wiener
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