Reviewing Ferdinand Lundberg's "Cracks in the Constitution"

Ferdinand Lundberg (1905 - 1995) was a 20th century economist, journalist, historian and author of such books as The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today; The Myth of Democracy; Politicians and Other Scoundrels; and the subject of this review - Cracks in the Constitution.

 

Lundberg's book was published twenty-seven years ago, yet remains as powerfully important and relevant today as then. Simply put, the book is a blockbuster. It's must reading to learn what schools to the highest levels never teach about the nation's most important document that lays out the fundamental law of the land in its Preamble, Seven Articles, Bill of Rights, and 17 other Amendments. Lundberg deconstructs it in depth, separating myth from reality about what he called "the great totem pole of American society."

 

He does it in 10 exquisitely written chapters with examples and detail galore to drive home his key message that our most sacred of all documents is flawed. It was crafted by 55 mostly ordinary but wealthy self-serving "wheeler dealers" (among whom only 39 signed), and the result we got and now live with falls far short of the "Rock of Ages" it's cracked up to be. That notion is pure myth. This review covers in detail how Lundberg smashed it in each chapter.

 

The Sacred Constitution

 

Lundberg quickly transfixes his readers by disabusing them of notions commonly held. Despite long-held beliefs, the Constitution is no "masterpiece of political architecture." It falls far short of "one great apotheosis (bathed) in quasi-religious light." The finished product was a "closed labyrinthine affair," not an "open" constitution like the British model. It was the product of duplicitous politicians and their close friends scheming to cut the best deals for themselves by leaving out the great majority of others who didn't matter.

 

The myths we learned in school and through the dominant media are legion, long-standing and widely held among the educated classes. They and most others believe the framers crafted a Constitution that "powerfully restrained and fettered" the federal government and created "a limited government (or a) government of limited powers." It's simply not so because through the power of the chief executive it can do "whatever it is from time to time" it wishes. In that respect, it's no more precise and binding than The Ten Commandments the Judaic and Christian worlds violate freely and willfully all the time. Even so-called "born-again" types, like the current President, do it, along with Popes, past and present, and the former Israeli Sephardi chief rabbi, Mordechai Eliyahu, who advocates mass killing by carpet bombing Gaza to save Jewish lives.

 

The "supreme Law of the Land" here deters no President or sitting government from doing as they wish, law or no law. The Constitution is easily ignored with impunity by popular or unpopular governments doing as they please and inventing reasons as justification. Lundberg is firm in debunking the notion that America is a government of laws, not men. It's "palpable nonsense of the highest order," he said. Governments enacting laws are composed of men who lie, connive, misinterpret and pretty much operate ad libitum discharging their duties as they see fit for their own self-interest.

 

It was no different in 1787 when 55 delegates (privileged all) assembled for four months in the same Philadelphia State House, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 11 years earlier, to rework the Articles of Confederation into a Constitution that would last into "remote futurity," as long as possible, or until others later changed it. None of them were happy with the finished product but felt it was the best one possible under the circumstances and better than nothing at all.

 

The document is "crisply worded" and can easily be read in 20 to 30 minutes and just as easily be totally misunderstood. The sole myth in it is stated in its opening Preamble words: "We the people of the United States....do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." In fact, "the people" nowhere entered the process, then or since.

 

At its beginning, "the people" who mattered were established white male property owning delegates and members of state ratifying conventions who rammed the ratification process through, by fair or foul means, in the face of a "largely indifferent and uncomprehending populace" left out entirely. They were elected to do it by eligible and interested while males comprising only from 12.5 - 15.5% of the electorate at the time. Women, blacks, Indians and children couldn't vote and many or most qualified voters didn't bother to and still don't. The process, and what it produced, showed "Democracy operatively is little more than a fantasy."

 

The American revolution was nothing more than secession from the British empire changing very little with one-third of the colonists favoring it (not upper classes), one-third opposed (mainly upper classes) and another third indifferent to the whole business. From then to now, the country is no nearer "government by the people" than under monarchal or autocratic rule. The latter types rule by application or threat of force whereas sovereign people are manipulated by other means with naked force held in reserve if needed.

 

Lundberg explained the minimum function of government, ours or others, should be to insure the public welfare is being broadly served. It's stated in the Preamble and Article I, Section 8 that "The Congress shall have power to....provide for....(the) general welfare of the United States" - the so-called welfare clause. Lundberg let scholar Herman Finer (with more detail on his ideas below) dispel the notion from the constitutional flaws he found and some of the many "social and political evils" he recounted as a result through the middle 20th century decades - rampant crime, unsafe streets, lack of justice, political corruption, dishonest police, racketeering labor officials, corporate fraud in pursuit of profits, raging unresolved social problems and lots more. Only government can address these issues and unless it does successfully it fails. Our is a long history of failure overall with only feeble attempts to fix things.

 

Lundberg reviewed popular misconceptions about the Constitution saying so many are embedded in the American psyche it's hard knowing where to begin. He noted the document is called "The Living Constitution" saying, in fact, it's "whatever government does or does not do" or uses in whatever way it wishes. The Constitution defines itself as the "supreme Law of the Land" in Article VI, Section 2 which it is and includes all amendments, enacted statutes and treaties made with the concurrence (not ratification) of the Senate. The people are left out of the process entirely with Lundberg saying "government of the people, by the people and for the people" is a "nonexistent entity. The people don't govern either directly or through 'representatives.' The people are governed."

 

In sum, although the Constitution served many of the purposes its designers and supporters envisioned, in light of the majority populace's great expectations of it, "it has been, quite plainly, a huge flop." That's made clear below.

 

"We the People"

 

Lundberg destroys the romanticism and enthusiasm felt today about the Constitution and the revolt against Great Britain preceding it. He began by reviewing the establishment of state constitutions at the time and the enactment of the Articles of Confederation adopted by the Second Continental Congress November 15, 1777 with final ratification March 1, 1781. None of these events had electoral sanction. "They were strictly coup d'etat affairs, run by small groups of self-styled patriots many of whom bettered their personal economic positions significantly" from the revolution and events before and after it took place. Despite what's commonly taught in schools, most people opposed the Constitution when it was ratified. So by getting it done anyway, the framers (with the conservative Federalists spearheading the effort) went against the will of the people they ignored and disdained.

 

It wasn't easy, though, as only by promising amendments did it happen. The anti-Federalist opposition demanded and got the "oft-hymned" first ten amendments, commonly known as the Bill of Rights. In fact, they "made no great difference," and did little to dilute the 1787 document. More on that below.

 

Lundberg explained that most anti-Federalists weren't particularly happy either with the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution. These men were mostly privileged property owners (all white, of course) squabbling over the means to get pretty similar ends and having a generally hostile attitude about the majority population overall. In other words, everyone was not considered "We the people," which is how radical English Whigs felt and whose traditions colonists adopted. "The illiterate and underprivileged (elements) were not much considered" with the "people" again being the privileged male property owners in charge of everything and out only for their own self-interest.

 

Lundberg cited voting patterns earlier, up to his time, and clearly now as well, to explain how people are left out of the political process. Whether franchised or not, most don't vote in presidential elections and even fewer show up for congressional, state and local ones. It indicates the will of the people needs considerable qualifying because most of them aren't interested, don't want to bother, don't think it matters, don't understand the whole process, and decide to opt out and act like nothing's going on. "Although repugnant to ideologists of democracy," Lundberg stated, "this conclusion is quite true."

 

In sum, the relevance of this to the Constitution is that its opening words are meaningless window dressing. They neither add nor detract from the document which served as a "screen and launching pad for practically autonomous, freely improvising politicians (like any others in the world)....the gentry....sustained (in whatever their endeavors were) by the constitutional structure" they created for their own self-serving purposes.

 

What the Framers Thought

 

This section covers who these men were below as well as more about them in the section to follow. Here, first off, the record needs to be set straight about what these very ordinary men (contrary to popularized myth about them) thought about their creation we extoll today like it came down from Mt. Sinai. In fact, it was the result of wheeling and dealing in likely smoke-filled rooms the way deals are cut today with lots of real and figurative smoke to go along with the usual mirrors. When they finished in September, 1787, there was no joy in Philadelphia. The framers disliked their creation, some could barely tolerate it, yet most signed it.

 

They understood its defects, that it was full of holes, thought it was the best they could do under the circumstances, felt it was a mess, but, nonetheless, believed they could live with it for the time being, hoping it wouldn't come back to bite them. Lundberg said they likely "kept their fingers crossed." One other thing was clear, though, despite "crowd-titillating campaign oratory" about their creation ever since. Not a single framer suggested "a sheltered haven was being prepared for the innumerable heavily laden, bedraggled, scrofulous and oppressed of the earth." On the contrary, they intended to keep them that way showing not a lot is fundamentally different then than now, and the so-called founders were a pretty devious bunch, not the noble characters we've been taught to believe.

 

As already explained, the deal got done with the usual kinds of wheeling and dealing, and, in the end, a lot of opponents being won over by agreeing to tack on the so-called Bill of Rights that was deliberately left out at first. The dominant elements behind the convention were what today are called nationalists. More precisely, they were "centralizers who were continental and global in their thinking." The opposition consisted of "localists," later called "states-righters," who preferred a decentralized government. The "centralizers" wanted a single or central national capital run by superior people by their definition - the rich and better-connected regardless of ability. Men like John Adams and John Jay (the first High Court chief justice) felt government should be run, in Adams' words, by "the rich, the well born, and the able." There was no disagreement on that notion.

 

There were no populists in the bunch, no anti-property party, and even the most vocal civil libertarians, like Jefferson and George Mason, were slave-owners. Washington, for his part, contributed no pet constitutional ideas other than wanting to protect the new nation from drifting toward disunion which, in fact, happened with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Lundberg described him as "the very top dog of the Philadelphia accouchement (the constitutional birthing process)." He understood the key reason for adopting a flawed document, no matter how bad it was or how the framers felt about it. Accepting it was the way to prevent disunion and resulting confusion that might have prevailed if public consideration entered the equation to become accepted policy and law.

 

Conflicting ideas of concern at the time visualized three central governments consisting of the New England states, middle Atlantic ones, and those in the South with likely new entries to follow in the West. The framers worried this arrangement might cause endless bickering and wars as well as rivalrous agreements and arrangements with other countries. In one stroke, the Constitution produced a united front against an ever-encroaching Europe and internal struggles.

 

Lundberg spent much time on who the founders were this review can only touch on. It's enough just to put a few faces on a group of crass opportunists who today are practically ranked along side the Apostles. But who's to say those few were any better than others of their day the way myths are constructed and passed on through the ages unchallenged in mainstream thinking. And don't forget that, in his first term, George Bush might have been aiming for sainthood by claiming he got his orders directly from God who told him to "strike at Al-Queda....and then.... to strike at Saddam." Even the framers didn't claim that type heavenly connection.

 

They did have Lundberg's focus beginning with Alexander Hamilton, Washington's wartime aide-de-camp, first Secretary of the Treasury and acknowledged leader of the Federalists. Here's what this noted man thought of the Constitution in 1802. In a letter, he called it "a shilly shally thing of mere milk and water (and) a frail and worthless document." This is from the man, more than any other in Philadelphia, who was its most articulate and passionate champion. Franklin, too, had doubts as the grand old man, but mere enfeebled figurehead at the convention, who also signed the final document. He was against two separate chambers, disapproved of some of the articles and wanted others that weren't included.

 

Then there's James Madison miscalled "The Father of the Constitution," which he expressly repudiated and a year later wrote "I am not of the number if there be any such, who think the Constitution lately adopted a faultless work.....(It's) the best that could be obtained from the jarring interests of the states....Something, anything, was better than nothing." Madison's disaffection went even further, in fact. At the convention, he was an ardent "centralizer," but 10 years later he reversed himself by aligning with those wanting to recapture more state power. He also spent most of his life disagreeing with the way the document he helped write was used.

 

Lundberg covered a few other framers most people know little or nothing about but played their part along with the better known ones. They included men like Nicholas Gilman from New Hampshire, William Pierce and William Few from Georgia, Pierce Butler and Charles Pinckney from South Carolina, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris (no relation) and James Wilson from Pennsylvania, Jonathan Dayton from New Jersey, and James McHenry from Maryland.

 

Of the total 55 delegates attending, 39 signed and 16 didn't, but doing it or not was just a pro forma exercise as only the states had power to accept or reject it. None of the framers believed the Constitution was the glorious achievement people ever since were led to believe - quite the opposite, in fact, but most still went along with it as better than nothing. The nation's second and third Presidents, Adams and Jefferson, were abroad and didn't attend the convention although Adams was considered the leading constitutional theorist at the time. His views had weight and were strong ones. Lundberg noted for the rest of his life until 1826 he consistently criticized the document in private correspondence.

 

Jefferson overall was just as unhappy. Until it was added, he objected to the omission of a Bill of Rights. He also disliked the lack of any requirements for rotation in office, especially the office of the presidency he wished to be ineligible for a succeeding term. In 1801, he was involved with others proposing a menu of changes to strengthen a document he believed was flawed. He also didn't think any constitution could survive the test of time, unchanged forever, able to meet all legitimate needs, and as a consequence wanted a new convention every 20 years to update things and fix obvious problems.

 

Lundberg felt Jefferson and Adams' main objection was they had no part in writing it or were even consulted on what should go in it. They had a point. Adams, as noted, was the leading constitutional theorist of the time and Jefferson (in Lundberg's view) was the most consummate politician in the nation's history, but by no means its best President.

 

The convention ended September 17, 1787 "in an atmosphere verging on glumness." Delegates signing it were just witnesses to the actions of state delegations, not as individual endorsers, and despite their public approval, nearly all had "inner qualms." James Monroe from Virginia, a future President, was one of them. He voted nay with 15 others that included important figures like George Mason, Elbridge Gerry and Edmund Randolph.

 

Southern delegates were won over for ratification by strengthening chattel slavery. The Constitution forbade the federal government from emancipating slaves until Lincoln acted in a meaningless 1862 politically motivated Executive Order. It wasn't until Congress passed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, and enough states ratified them, that the law changed freeing the slaves and giving them nominal rights they never, in fact, had in the South at least for another 100 years. Lundberg noted the "slavocracy was not terminated....for moral reasons; it committed suicide for political and economic reasons, blinded by simple greed and vaingloriousness, and long after slavery was abolished in most places elsewhere."

 

Who the Framers Were

 

Lundberg asked: "Who were these men about whom so many (unjustifiably) have rhapsodized? Fifty-five in total showed up in Philadelphia in 1787 out of 74 authorized by state legislatures. A fourth of them stayed only briefly, another quarter checked in and out like tourists, and no more than five men carried most of the discussion with seven others playing "fitful" supporting roles.

 

Further, they didn't, in fact, come to write a new constitution. They were congressionally authorized only to propose amendments to the prevailing Articles of Confederation. Little did they all know in May what would emerge in September, or maybe the ones who counted most did.

 

Of the 19 non-attending delegates, 11 wanted nothing to do with the affair, were opposed to it, distrusted it, and thought it rigged from the start. The other eight had various excuses - illness (political or real), focused at home with other business, not having their travel expenses covered, and reluctant to make such a long trip to be away from home and hearth for months.

 

Of those showing up, 33 were lawyers, 44 present or past members of Congress, 46 had political positions at home, including seven as former governors and five high state judges. These were men of note and economic means who promoted their own financial interests and parallel activity in government. In a word, they were movers and shakers or as Lundberg called them - "wheeler dealers."

 

He described the group as a "gathering of the rich, the well-born and, here and there, the able (with that quality being the exception)." Washington and Robert Morris were reputed to be the richest men in the country with property holdings in most cases being their main component of wealth at the time along with slaveholdings on it. Directly or indirectly as lawyers or principals, these men were an assemblage of "planters, bankers, merchants, ship-owners, slave-traders, smugglers, privateers, money-lenders, investors, and speculators in land and securities" - essentially a group of powerful figures not much different from their counterparts today. With a few exceptions, Lundberg said they'd now be called a "Wall Street crowd."

 

In their mind, "The clear aim of the Constitution was to launch a system that would protect, and enable to flourish, the general interests there represented." With Great Britain removed, a vacuum was created. The Constitution, with a new government, was created to fill it restoring the same essential British commercial and financial system under new management, or as the French would say, everything changed yet everything stayed the same. Republican government simply removed British monarchal wrappings to operate pretty much the same way. Lundberg quoted Daniel Leonard saying "Never in history had there been so much rebellion with so little real cause" and so little change following it. As for the ingredients of the Constitution, Lundberg explained nearly all of them could have been "stamped with the benchmark 'Originated in England.' Only the mixture was different."

 

Further, 27 delegates were future members of Congress, two were future Presidents, one a future Vice-President, one a Speaker of the House, and five future High Court justices. They produced a Constitution generated along predetermined lines by the government itself by "a small self-selected elite at the center of government affairs." They did it in deliberately general, vague, ambiguous language, the product of consummate self-serving insiders. The "people" were nowhere in sight then or for the later future amendment ratifications, all of which were done solely by similar-minded self-serving later officials for their own political purposes. It's always been that way from the beginning, of course, and is strikingly so today.

 

Lundberg then reviewed the political background and record of the delegates starting off with the elder statesman in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, the wisest of the bunch. In 1787, he was an octogenarian, attended as a mere figurehead, signed the final document, but was too enfeebled to address the convention at its end, so he enlisted a friend to read his rather notable and prescient remarks to the others saying:

 

"I agree to this Constitution with all its faults....I think a General Government (is) necessary for us (and) may be a blessing....if well-administered; (I "farther" believe that's likely) for a Course of Years (but) can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall have become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other." Imagine such a dark prophecy at the nation's birth by a man who never met George Bush but was wise enough to know he'd arrive sooner or later. Franklin today would surely say "I warned you, didn't I."

 

Other notable signers were less insightful, or if they were, didn't let on. Two of them, John Dickinson and William Johnson were members of the 1765 Stamp Act Congress. Six others were members of the mainly conservative First Continental Congress of 1774 - Thomas Mifflin, Edmund Randolph, George Read, John Rutledge, Roger Sherman, and George Washington.

 

Other important attendees were Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, George Mason, John Langdon, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris (no relation) and William Livingston. Lundberg called Langdon, Livingston, Randolph, Rutledge and R. Morris political power bosses or power-brokers of their day, and Robert Morris was known to his friends and enemies as the "Great Man." He was the unmatched financial giant of the era with Lundberg saying "his brain would have made two of Hamilton" and that his economic and political power at the time were unrivaled matching that of the House of Morgan in the early 20th century combined with New York's Tammany Hall.

 

According to Lundberg, however, this was no "all-star political team" compared to other more distinguished figures not there - Jefferson, John and Sam Adams, John Jay, John Hancock, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, Paul Revere, John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry and many others. Apart from two notables, Washington and Franklin, as well as Robert Morris, few later became prominent nationally. In 1787, Madison and Hamilton (Washington proteges) were virtual unknowns.

 

Lundberg noted nothing on record shows this assemblage to have been extraordinarily learned, profound in their thinking or even unusually capable. Only 25 attended college, and "the one man who held the convention together by the mere force of his presence"....Washington, never got beyond the fifth grade. Franklin was mostly self-taught and Hamilton was a college dropout his first year. Robert Morris, the JP Morgan of his day, and George Mason also never attended college. Of the 25 college attendees, only Madison, Wilson and G. Morris were contributors of note.

 

In point of fact, colleges in those days were quite rudimentary and graduated students at a much earlier age, often as young as 16, and a bright student could master the law for a degree in a matter of weeks the way Hamilton did. The same was true in England at the time with Oxford and Cambridge not then considered distinguished educational centers as they are now.

 

Most of the attending delegates also had military backgrounds, but writing about them kept that information secret. Lundberg stressed it saying "the gathering took on the complexion of the general staff of the war of the revolution." Why not, the boss himself was there, Washington, along with his leading officers. In all, 27 delegates served under him in the war. He knew them, most of the others, and all of them stood in awe of him as a larger than life figure. He was "always the nonpareil," assured he'd be the new nation's uncontested first president. He had no party affiliation, ran unopposed twice and got all the votes for two terms in a process more like coronations than elections.

 

He and the other delegates came to Philadelphia, assembled, did their work and went home in many cases to pursue "their eclipse." Lundberg explained "As a collection of supposedly highly sagacious men, the post-convention careers of the framers raise a big question mark." Ten went bankrupt or became broke, several were involved in financial scandals, two died in duels, one became a shattered drunkard, two "flittered" with treason, one was expelled from the Senate, one went mad, others quarreled bitterly among themselves about politics and interpreting the document they created, and most switched political sides for convenience in their subsequent quests for office. Washington himself, likely died from medical malpractice, the victim of a bloodletting procedure, after he took ill, when he needed all he had.

 

Other framers began dying off as well, a number of them right after the convention and at ages considered very young today for some. Robert (JP Morgan) Morris went bankrupt speculating in public lands and securities, owed millions as a result, served three and a half ignominious years in debtors' prison, and died broke in 1806. Other framers also speculated and lost heavily in their financial dealings.

 

Hamilton was one of the few Philadelphia delegates to achieve a notable post-convention record as Washington's Secretary of the Treasury and Federalist Party leader. Noteworthy as well was Gouverneur Morris, no relation to Robert. Finally, there was James Madison who was neither the Constitution's father or its indispensable or principle source. He, in fact, had no original or unique ideas to bring to the convention. In this respect, he was like all the others.

 

Madison did perform a hugely important function as an "amanuensis," dutifully and painstakingly recording the convention proceedings in what historians today call an accurate and complete stenographic record, the best available. It was not until 1840 that it became public after Congress bought it from his estate. He documented what Lundberg called "startling" - that the convention delegates were "a group of men intent upon securing various special economic interests" and weren't the "philosophically detached cogitators they had been held up in propaganda to be."

 

Madison's report shattered the view that these men came together to devise the best possible government. From the start, they knew what they wanted (at least the key ones there) and set about getting it. Madison was also a powerful advocate on the convention floor of widely discussed views. Unlike the others, he had no considerable property or means, but he lived to age 85, outlasted all the other framers, and served as the nation's fourth President. In total, eight delegates at most can be considered weighty. The rest were "routine or parochial or both," and that conclusion is astounding for a group of 55 leading men of the day who "participated in the formulation of a reputed deathless document" and are revered in classrooms and society as larger-than-life icons.

 

The Gorgeous Convention

 

Lundberg stared off saying "The constitutional convention of 1787, an historical event of first-class importance, was itself an entirely routine, utterly uninspiring political caucus....it produced absolutely no prodigies of statecraft, no wonders of political (judgment), no vaulting philosophies, no Promethean vistas." In point of fact, as already stressed and repeated, what happened contradicts all we've been "indoctrinated from ears to toes" to believe that's pure nonsense. Lundberg called the main fantasy the popular conception that the Constitution is "a document of salvation....a magic talisman." The central achievement of the convention, and a big one, (at least until 1861) was the cobbling together of disparate and squabbling states into a union that held together tenuously for over seven decades but not actually until Appomattox "at bayonet point."

 

As mentioned above, the delegates came to Philadelphia merely to amend the unwieldy Articles of Confederation so what it did was, "strictly viewed, illegal." The finished product emerged as an amalgam of the existing Maryland, New York and Massachusetts constitutions dating respectively from 1776, 1777 and 1790, the latter one written almost entirely by John Adams in a few days. Even though he was abroad in London at the time, the finished Constitution was largely the product of his earlier work. Of those attending, no individual theorist dominated proceedings, but two dominant personalities held things together as its "living core." Without the force of their presence, Lundberg explained, the whole process "would almost surely have foundered."

 

Those men were George Washington, the larger-than- life victorious general of the revolution, and "Great Man" Robert Morris, the JP Morgan-type figure who later went bust because even financial whizards can succumb to excess greed. Gouverneur Morris also was prominent in the proceedings while Madison and Hamilton, as already explained, were virtual unknowns.

 

Lundberg called the convention "very much a prefabricated group affair" with internal differences over concentrating power in the President or Congress. Then, there were the "tight nationalizers, those generally wanting a national government, and lastly in the minority "states-righters" believing no state power should be surrendered to a federal authority. "As for flat-out democrats," said Lundberg, "there were none in sight." In terms of what they achieved, he called it "Old Wine in a Fancy New Bottle" with a new name under new management. The purpose of the convention was to gain formal approval for what the leading power figures wanted and then get their creation rammed through the state ratification process to make it the law of the land. On that score, and after much wheeling and dealing, they achieved mightily.

 

The convention began in May, went on through three phases for 120 days, and concluded in September after dozens of parliamentary-type votes to postpone, reconsider, amend, etc. with a document produced and turned over to a committee of detail in late July. The final phase ran from August 6 to September 17, nine states were needed for ratification with the larger, more populous ones, granting concessions to the small ones to win the day.

 

Several scenarios or plans were proposed, one of which was the Virginia Plan envisioning a central national government with a bicameral legislature that, of course, was adopted. All the plans were "strongly rightist" or conservative. Members of the lower house were to be elected by the people and those in the upper body by members of the lower one. That became the law and stayed that way until the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, allowed the people of each state to elect their own senators.

 

Also proposed was a chief executive, a national judiciary with a Supreme Court at the top, and provisions for admitting new states with republican governments in them all. In addition, the finished Constitution included proposals for amendments and much else including terms of office and staggered elections to prevent too many officials being unseated at the same time. The final product was what one academic observer called a "bundle of compromises" from beginning to end.

 

Lundberg described the delegates as "flinty hard-liners, determined to have their way, never to yield on anything substantial....willing to make purely political compromises (over) the means of carrying on government (but) adamantly resistant....when it came to (its) ends." Those were primarily economic and social, and those were left as they were when ties with Great Britain were cut.

 

Thinking then was much like today with provisions in the Constitution targeting the discontented. Congress was empowered to raise revenue through taxation, always hitting the less advantaged hardest. It was authorized to borrow money without limit meaning the people would have to service the debt. It was given power to regulate foreign and interstate commerce assuring the rich their interests would be served, and much more. In sum, the document created "was the means by which the traditional establishment....was re-establishing itself" leaving out of the mix the interests of the "common man (who) in point of fact was going to be allowed to remain....common (with) the Constitution, contrary to political blarney (offering) him no bonuses for it."

 

Lundberg titled one sub-section: "Down with the People." In it, he caught the mood of the delegates as expressed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut who said "The people should have as little to do as may be about the government." Elbridge Gerry then denounced the evils stemming from "the excess of democracy," and debating delegates drubbed democracy and "the people" repeatedly. That's how Alexander Hamilton saw things in his view of "mankind in toto (being) wholly depraved" disagreeing with Thomas Paine's notion of government being depraved and people being inherently good. Paine wasn't a delegate so he had no input into the proceedings and couldn't argue against the central interest of property as a requirement for voting and holding office.

 

Even Jefferson accepted this idea but hated the word enough to use another expression for it in the Declaration of Independence he authored. His substitute language for "property" was "the pursuit of happiness," meaning the same thing. While Jefferson abhorred that "word," the attending delegates (Madison and Hamilton among them) found it their "favorite (one), often brought to the fore as a matter of deepest concern." Also brought up was the "minority," but not "any minority or all minorities. It was the minority of the opulent."

 

The far-sighted among them foresaw a bonanza coming from the revolution that came about when the states passed confiscation acts, putting properties up for sale at bargain prices, still only affordable to the affluent. It sounds very much like the way corporate predators planned to pillage and plunder Iraq and have done a pretty good job of it.

 

There was also plenty of graft to go around, again just like in Iraq