On this episode of Our American Stories, they were serious people undertaking the very serious task of saving the new nation in a stuffy little room in Philadelphia. The late great David McCullough tells this remarkable story at a Constitution Day event at the National Archives in Washington D.C.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, the story of the creation of our nation's
governing document and what inspired the men who created it.
Here to tell the story of the Constitution is the
late great historian David McCullough at a Constitution Day event
(00:32):
at the National Archives in two thy eleven. Let's get
into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Now. We're talking today about a document that's old by
our standards, but not old as history goes. Our country
is not old as history goes. There are cathedrals in
France and elsewhere in Europe that were built and still
stand and still evoke responses from everyone who comes there,
(01:00):
that were built before Columbus ever set sail. We are
a new society, a new event in history, as old
as some of it may seem from our point of view. Now,
another lesson of history is that some people have the
capacity to see adversity as opportunity. Adversity is often extremely difficult,
(01:27):
and sometimes tragic and sometimes heartbreaking, but adversity can also
be an opportunity to change things, to improve, to pioneer,
to build. And then there's the very real and very
pertinent lesson of history concerning this subject of this morning,
(01:50):
and that is that America is a combined effort. Very
little of consequence is ever accomplished alone. Very little of
consequences ever accomplished alone. One person may get a lot
of credit or all the credit, but never is it
just one person. And this combined effort, many heads in
(02:14):
many hands, as James Madison said, is the reason why
the Constitution happened. Now, in the summer of seventeen eighty seven,
our country was in very bad shape. It was a
time of turbulence, time of uncertainty, time of worry suffering.
(02:35):
People were in debt, seriously in debt. Crops had failed
in many parts of the country. There was deep fear
and deep unrest. One of the most notable examples of
that was western Massachusetts, which gave rise to what was
known as the Chase Rebellion, which was a serious event.
(02:58):
Thousands of farmers descending on a city of Springfield, the
armory there to try and get the weapons, being stopped
by a military force Americans against Americans. Now, it didn't
come to an awful lot, but it set a tremor
(03:19):
of fear through the whole country. The problem was the
federal government wasn't very strong. There really wasn't a federal government.
We had the Articles of Confederation, We had no chief executive.
The Revolutionary War was fought without a president. The president
was the commander in chief, if you will, George Washington,
(03:41):
So you could see George Washington as not just having
been president of the United States for eight years, but
having served more than eight years as commander in chief.
So in all, he was really the figurehead, the leader
of our country for sixteen years. And if he had
not attended the Constitutional Convention, the Constitutional Convention might not
(04:04):
have succeeded. His presence, His gravitas, his importance, his integrity
were essential. Now is a great cast of characters who
met there in Philadelphia in seventeen eighty seven. Five of
them are worth noting. All of them are worth noting.
(04:25):
But James Madison, who probably worked harder, very quiet, small man,
poor health, very intelligent and very dedicated. Alexander Hamilton from
New York, who was a spectacular talker, a stimulating prodigy
of a mind, charming charismatic. Ben Franklin, the wise old
(04:52):
man of the scene of the play. If you will,
who doesn't say an awful lot during this session, but
whose p like Washington's, is immensely important. Gouvernor Morris, who
was tall, handsome, talked more than anybody from Pennsylvania, another
very important figure. Their meeting in Philadelphia in secret, in
(05:17):
the same room where the Declaration of Independence was worked
out and soigned. Many of you, I hope have been there.
You've seen it. It's not a very large room. It's
not a vast impressive gathering place, and its importance to
our story as a country, to who we are and
what we stand for, could not be greater. One of
(05:39):
the historians has said that the Constitution is our crowning work,
was the crowning work of the American Revolution. It was, indeed,
But keep in mind it is not a crown of
gold and jewels. It's a crown of words on paper.
(06:00):
Words matter. What we say, what we profess to believe
as expressed in words matter not just at the moment,
but possibly for a very long time to come. The
pen is a sword. The pen can be a weapon,
but the pen can also be a magic wand. And
(06:23):
when you think of what these relatively few people did
in very little time three months meeting in that room
with the windows closed because they don't want word to
get out. Sentries at the windows to keep people from
coming up and listening in that heat of Philadelphia and
(06:46):
humidity of the center. This is punishment. But they're working
in secret, not to keep anybody from knowing, but keep
the politicians in them, ambitious statesman, if you will, who
are in that room, from grandstanding, from saying things for effect.
They're saying things for popularity or to make an impression
(07:07):
back home. Not their business. Their business is to hammer
out a document that will stay on the test of.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Time and when we come back, more of the story
of the Constitution and the men who wrote it, the
men who created it. Here on Our American Stories, leeh
abb Here, host of Our American Stories. Every day on
this show, we bring you stories of America, stories of us.
(07:36):
And it's because of listeners like you that were able
to tell the story of this great and beautiful country
every day. Our stories will always be free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, consider making a tax deductible donation to Our
American Stories. Is it our American Stories dot Com to
give give a little, give a lot, any amount helps,
(07:56):
but to our American Stories dot com. And we returned
to our American stories and the story of the Constitution.
Telling the story at a National Constitution Day event at
(08:17):
the National Archives back in twenty eleven is the late
Great David McCullough. When we last left off, we learned
that the drafters of the Constitution had to spend many
months away from home in secret to create the document
that we now all live by in a little stuffy
room in Philadelphia. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
That was asking a great deal of those people three
months away from home, three months away from their work,
three months a very hard, concentrated effort under difficult circumstances,
calling upon their patriotism, not the flag waving patriotism, chest
(09:00):
beating kind, but the kind of getting down to do serious,
difficult work in a very serious, worrisome time. But those
people saw this as our chance to do it right.
We're going to do it. Let's do it right. What
they worked out, as I hope all of you know,
(09:21):
is the basic structure of our government. And that's easy
to say, and it's easy to say, oh, yes, I
know that the bicameral legislature, the chief executive and the judiciary.
What they were really working out is a national government,
a national government with power, which is the very issue
(09:44):
that troubles so many people today. So is all of
this relevant to the world we live in. It certainly
is every day. Should you understand it, should you think
about it? Absolutely all the time. We can never know
(10:04):
enough about the founding fathers as they've come to be known,
never know enough, and we're learning more all the time.
It isn't an old story that's been just talked to death,
and it is again infinitely compelling because of its human
frailties and human soaring. One of the mistakes people make
(10:27):
very often is that they read about a success, an
accomplishment that improves an old problem, that dispenses with what
was inadequate before, and they think it was a perfect
job therefore, and that what was there before was inadequate
and a failure. Now. There is a great deal to
(10:48):
be said for that point of view, but it's almost
always not quite complete. The articles of Confederation were weak.
They didn't have an executive to run the country, taxing power,
wasn't there power to control diplomatic negotiations for the whole
country wasn't there on and on, But the Articles of Confederation,
(11:13):
as weak as it was, got us through eight and
a half years of the Revolutionary War, the most bloody
war in our history on a per capita basis except
for the Civil War. People forget that. And just because
they wore funny clothes and walked around with wigs on
and so forth, doesn't mean that they weren't human beings
suffering all the horrors of war. Isn't just a number
(11:36):
of people who are killed. It's all the people who
have been wounded and stricken with disease, and taken away
from their families for years at a time on terrible
food and no pay all. Somehow or other, the Articles
of Confederation in that government that was in Philadelphia managed
to do it. Also, ironically, the same summer, this tumultuous,
(11:58):
troubled summer venteen eighty seven, under the Articles of Confederation
was past. The Northwest Ordinance. Think about this. Think The
Northwest Ordinance created a new part of the country for
the future's development. Five states would result from it, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
(12:21):
and Wisconsin, a territory bigger than the entire nation of France,
center of the Great Lakes, one of the most valuable,
most American places on the map. And they specified there
would be no slavery before we even had a constitution,
(12:42):
no slavery in those states, and that there would be
public education, neither of which would wind up in the Constitution.
So they were ahead of the Constitution in that respect.
So to just dismiss the Articles of Confederation as having
been largely a failure is to not understand what really happened.
(13:05):
The fact that there was no slavery in those states
would change our whole history, And of course it was
admirable in the extreme, the fact that they saw that
education was essential to our whole system, to its success
and did something about it, didn't just talk about it.
Jefferson said, any nation expects to be ignorant and free,
expects what never was and never will be. But there's
(13:29):
nothing in the Constitution about that. The other point I
want to make is that the Constitution isn't a success entirely.
Martin Luther King put it very well that it was
a promissory note because it ducked it avoided the issue
of slavery. The issue with the ultimate lead into the
(13:52):
worst calamity in the history of our country, the Civil War.
Six hundred thousand people died because of slavery in that war,
six hundred thousand people, and that's not counting all the
people that went home with one arm or no legs.
(14:13):
We are accountable for what we do. History shows that,
and we are capable of rising up out of terrible
troubled times and doing something something thrilling. That is a
symbol of affirmation. And the Constitution is that even before
(14:37):
the amendments were added the Bill of Rights, even before
the fourteenth Amendment was finally added, ending slavery, we keep
fixing it now. Whether the Constitution should be taken literally
or should be judged by the temper in the moment
and the problems of the moment by the jurists is
(14:58):
continuing issue. The great effort was to find a middle way.
That's what they were struggling for in that hot broom
with the windows closed, to find the middle way together.
And they succeeded in doing it, and it might not
have gone that way. That's the other thing it didn't have.
History is never on a track. We're often taught this followed,
(15:21):
this follow that followed that got to memorize it'll be
on the test on Wednesday, and therefore it had to
come out that way. It never had to come out
any one way or another. And what they achieved at
Philadelphia was like nothing else that had ever been achieved.
Words on paper, a constitution on paper, a written constitution,
(15:44):
still still the law of the land, still part of
who we are and what we believe. There are only five,
I believe, colleges or universities or institutions of higher learning
in our country that require their students to take at
least one term on the Constitution. Three of them are
(16:08):
military academies. Now, if you say to someone, do you
think it's a good idea that officers in the military
should know the Constitution? Oh, yes, they certainly should. What
about all the rest of us? What about all of us,
not just incoming people from elsewhere in the world applying
to become citizens, to have to take a very good,
serious test in American history. We all should. It's part
(16:34):
of our job, part of being a citizen. And it's
infinitely interesting. I think that everybody should go to Philadelphia
at some point and go into that room and think
about what was done. There. Think about those human beings
and they're frailies. Some of them got in a lot
(16:54):
of trouble later on, personally or professionally. Some of them peaked,
as we would say then, but while they were there,
they were using the best ability they had. They were thinking,
this wasn't a sound bite opportunity to be practiced by
(17:16):
sound bite rains. These are serious.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
People, and indeed serious people they were, and they were
certainly not sound bite people or sound bite minds. It's
why we have not the oldest nation, but we certainly
have the oldest constitution. Is what those guys did on
those days in Philadelphia, those sweltering days, was truly a miracle.
(17:44):
When we come back more of how the Constitution came
to be here on our American stories, and we returned
(18:09):
to our American stories and the final portion of our
story on the Constitution and its drafters and signers with
the late great David McCullough, let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Some of them got in a lot of trouble later on,
personally but professionally. Some of them peaked, as we would
say then, but while they were there, they were using
the best ability they had. They were thinking. This wasn't
a sound bite opportunity to be practiced by sound bite brains.
(18:48):
These were serious people. Now. Most of them, over half
of them, were under forty years old. Don't think of
them as wise old founding fathers. Some of them were
like Franklin. Most of them were quite young, but they'd
had the experience of the war, which did not make
(19:09):
them anything but versed, steeped in the realities of tragedy
and accomplishment and courage and faith. Look at the First
Amendment alone, for example, what would we be without that?
Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press.
(19:33):
What does that mean? It means freedom of expression, freedom
to use your mind, freedom to have ideas. One historian
is called history the inexhaustible storehouse of ideas. Think of
it as that. Don't think of history as memorizing dates
or quotations from great pronouncements. You can look those things
(19:56):
up in a book. Think of it as an adventure.
Think of it as a human, unfolding, human story of
infinite interest, in which more happens that is unbelievable than
happens in most works of fiction. The truth is often
much stranger than fiction, and more illuminating, and fortunately a
(20:20):
great deal of it has been superbly written down the ages.
Those people are all teaching us something, and they're asking
us to get to know them better and to get
to know what they went through to achieve what they
did in difficult times. We just celebrated the tenth anniversary
of the attack on the World Trade Center and on
(20:43):
the Pentagon here, and I remember vividly I was here
when it happened. People on television elsewhere in the press
saying this the darkest, most difficult time we've ever been through. Well,
it is indeed a very dark and very difficult time,
but we have been through worse. And one of the
values of history is that it keeps it makes impossible,
(21:04):
helps you to keep the dark times in proportion. Other
people have faced as difficult or worse, and look what
they did. That should be an inspiration. The story of
the writing of the Constitution of our country should be
an inspiration to us. Now. It's very important that we
know what they wrote. But I want to stress one
(21:28):
more thing. It's very important that we know also what
they read, because we are what we read. What were Washington, Jefferson, Franklin,
John Adams Jefferson. What were they reading when they were students?
What were they reading through life? From which writers? Which
(21:50):
words were they taking inspiration? One of them we know
was Alexander Pope, the great English poet, and his eg
is LG. A Man. Act well, you're part there, all
the honor lies. They all knew it, they all quoted it.
(22:10):
What's that mean? Act well, you're a part history, Luck, fate,
God choose about how you wish to say. It has
cast you in a role. Play it the best you can.
Why for money, No for power, no celebrity, no honor.
(22:34):
We don't hear much about honor these days. Act well,
you're part. They're all the honor lies. Now that doesn't
mean they always were able to do that, but they
were striving for that objective. And if you understand that,
you can understand who they were and why they were
the way they were a great deal more Scincly, in
(23:00):
seventeen seventy nine, a full eight years before the Constitutional Convention,
Massachusetts passed its constitution. And the Constitution of Massachusetts was
not just a harbinger or a preview of what was
to come in the national Constitution. It was a model.
(23:23):
Everything has its antecedents. Everything has some hint, some forecasts
in previous times, and in this Massachusetts Constitution is a
clause a paragraph written by John Adams. John Adams was
not in Philadelphia, nor was Jefferson, as I'm sure you know,
because they were serving as diplomats in Europe, but they
(23:47):
were reacting to it. They were keenly interested in all
the latest news. When the word came through that had
finally been passed, Adams wrote immediately to say, it's marvelous.
It's a tremendous accomplishment, but it needs a bill of rights.
Jefferson did not say much about needing a bill of
rights for quite some time, but eventually came around seeing
(24:08):
it that way. But the paragraph that Adams wrote for
the Massachusetts Constitution is the note I would like to
conclude my remarks to you this morning on When he
wrote it, he was sure that it would be rejected,
but he just had to do it ease his own mind.
It was passed unanimously and is still part of the
(24:31):
Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Wisdom and knowledge, as
well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people,
is necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties,
and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages
of education in various parts of the country and among
(24:52):
the different orders of people, in other words, everybody. It
shall be the duty, the duty of legislators and magistrates,
in all future periods of this Commonwealth to cherish the
interests of literature and the sciences in all the public
(25:14):
schools and grammar schools for the promotion of agriculture. Now
listen to this list. It includes everything virtually for the
promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a
(25:35):
natural history of the country. To countenance and inculcate the
principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity,
industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity,
(25:56):
good humor. There shall be good humor, all all social affections,
and generous sentiments among the people. Who could write anything
like that today and get it passed. His faith and
education was that as the bulwark of society. When he
(26:20):
was a young man, he wrote the following. John Adams
was a farmer's son. John Adams was the only founding
father who never owned a slave as a matter of principle.
He was twenty five years old when he wrote in
his little diary, I must judge for myself, But how
(26:43):
can I judge? How can anyone judge unless his mind
has been opened and enlarged by reading. And on that
I closed my remarks, and thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
And you've been listening to the late great David McCullough
telling the story of the Constitution back in twenty eleven
at the National Archives, and he said something so interesting.
To talk about what they wrote, We had to talk
about and have to talk about what they were reading,
the story of the Constitution, and in the end, the
(27:20):
story of us here on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, the story of the creation of our nation's
governing document and what inspired the men who created it.
Here to tell the story of the Constitution is the
late great historian David McCullough at a Constitution Day event
(00:32):
at the National Archives in two thy eleven. Let's get
into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Now. We're talking today about a document that's old by
our standards, but not old as history goes. Our country
is not old as history goes. There are cathedrals in
France and elsewhere in Europe that were built and still
stand and still evoke responses from everyone who comes there,
(01:00):
that were built before Columbus ever set sail. We are
a new society, a new event in history, as old
as some of it may seem from our point of view. Now,
another lesson of history is that some people have the
capacity to see adversity as opportunity. Adversity is often extremely difficult,
(01:27):
and sometimes tragic and sometimes heartbreaking, but adversity can also
be an opportunity to change things, to improve, to pioneer,
to build. And then there's the very real and very
pertinent lesson of history concerning this subject of this morning,
(01:50):
and that is that America is a combined effort. Very
little of consequence is ever accomplished alone. Very little of
consequences ever accomplished alone. One person may get a lot
of credit or all the credit, but never is it
just one person. And this combined effort, many heads in
(02:14):
many hands, as James Madison said, is the reason why
the Constitution happened. Now, in the summer of seventeen eighty seven,
our country was in very bad shape. It was a
time of turbulence, time of uncertainty, time of worry suffering.
(02:35):
People were in debt, seriously in debt. Crops had failed
in many parts of the country. There was deep fear
and deep unrest. One of the most notable examples of
that was western Massachusetts, which gave rise to what was
known as the Chase Rebellion, which was a serious event.
(02:58):
Thousands of farmers descending on a city of Springfield, the
armory there to try and get the weapons, being stopped
by a military force Americans against Americans. Now, it didn't
come to an awful lot, but it set a tremor
(03:19):
of fear through the whole country. The problem was the
federal government wasn't very strong. There really wasn't a federal government.
We had the Articles of Confederation, We had no chief executive.
The Revolutionary War was fought without a president. The president
was the commander in chief, if you will, George Washington,
(03:41):
So you could see George Washington as not just having
been president of the United States for eight years, but
having served more than eight years as commander in chief.
So in all, he was really the figurehead, the leader
of our country for sixteen years. And if he had
not attended the Constitutional Convention, the Constitutional Convention might not
(04:04):
have succeeded. His presence, His gravitas, his importance, his integrity
were essential. Now is a great cast of characters who
met there in Philadelphia in seventeen eighty seven. Five of
them are worth noting. All of them are worth noting.
(04:25):
But James Madison, who probably worked harder, very quiet, small man,
poor health, very intelligent and very dedicated. Alexander Hamilton from
New York, who was a spectacular talker, a stimulating prodigy
of a mind, charming charismatic. Ben Franklin, the wise old
(04:52):
man of the scene of the play. If you will,
who doesn't say an awful lot during this session, but
whose p like Washington's, is immensely important. Gouvernor Morris, who
was tall, handsome, talked more than anybody from Pennsylvania, another
very important figure. Their meeting in Philadelphia in secret, in
(05:17):
the same room where the Declaration of Independence was worked
out and soigned. Many of you, I hope have been there.
You've seen it. It's not a very large room. It's
not a vast impressive gathering place, and its importance to
our story as a country, to who we are and
what we stand for, could not be greater. One of
(05:39):
the historians has said that the Constitution is our crowning work,
was the crowning work of the American Revolution. It was, indeed,
But keep in mind it is not a crown of
gold and jewels. It's a crown of words on paper.
(06:00):
Words matter. What we say, what we profess to believe
as expressed in words matter not just at the moment,
but possibly for a very long time to come. The
pen is a sword. The pen can be a weapon,
but the pen can also be a magic wand. And
(06:23):
when you think of what these relatively few people did
in very little time three months meeting in that room
with the windows closed because they don't want word to
get out. Sentries at the windows to keep people from
coming up and listening in that heat of Philadelphia and
(06:46):
humidity of the center. This is punishment. But they're working
in secret, not to keep anybody from knowing, but keep
the politicians in them, ambitious statesman, if you will, who
are in that room, from grandstanding, from saying things for effect.
They're saying things for popularity or to make an impression
(07:07):
back home. Not their business. Their business is to hammer
out a document that will stay on the test of.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Time and when we come back, more of the story
of the Constitution and the men who wrote it, the
men who created it. Here on Our American Stories, leeh
abb Here, host of Our American Stories. Every day on
this show, we bring you stories of America, stories of us.
(07:36):
And it's because of listeners like you that were able
to tell the story of this great and beautiful country
every day. Our stories will always be free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, consider making a tax deductible donation to Our
American Stories. Is it our American Stories dot Com to
give give a little, give a lot, any amount helps,
(07:56):
but to our American Stories dot com. And we returned
to our American stories and the story of the Constitution.
Telling the story at a National Constitution Day event at
(08:17):
the National Archives back in twenty eleven is the late
Great David McCullough. When we last left off, we learned
that the drafters of the Constitution had to spend many
months away from home in secret to create the document
that we now all live by in a little stuffy
room in Philadelphia. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
That was asking a great deal of those people three
months away from home, three months away from their work,
three months a very hard, concentrated effort under difficult circumstances,
calling upon their patriotism, not the flag waving patriotism, chest
(09:00):
beating kind, but the kind of getting down to do serious,
difficult work in a very serious, worrisome time. But those
people saw this as our chance to do it right.
We're going to do it. Let's do it right. What
they worked out, as I hope all of you know,
(09:21):
is the basic structure of our government. And that's easy
to say, and it's easy to say, oh, yes, I
know that the bicameral legislature, the chief executive and the judiciary.
What they were really working out is a national government,
a national government with power, which is the very issue
(09:44):
that troubles so many people today. So is all of
this relevant to the world we live in. It certainly
is every day. Should you understand it, should you think
about it? Absolutely all the time. We can never know
(10:04):
enough about the founding fathers as they've come to be known,
never know enough, and we're learning more all the time.
It isn't an old story that's been just talked to death,
and it is again infinitely compelling because of its human
frailties and human soaring. One of the mistakes people make
(10:27):
very often is that they read about a success, an
accomplishment that improves an old problem, that dispenses with what
was inadequate before, and they think it was a perfect
job therefore, and that what was there before was inadequate
and a failure. Now. There is a great deal to
(10:48):
be said for that point of view, but it's almost
always not quite complete. The articles of Confederation were weak.
They didn't have an executive to run the country, taxing power,
wasn't there power to control diplomatic negotiations for the whole
country wasn't there on and on, But the Articles of Confederation,
(11:13):
as weak as it was, got us through eight and
a half years of the Revolutionary War, the most bloody
war in our history on a per capita basis except
for the Civil War. People forget that. And just because
they wore funny clothes and walked around with wigs on
and so forth, doesn't mean that they weren't human beings
suffering all the horrors of war. Isn't just a number
(11:36):
of people who are killed. It's all the people who
have been wounded and stricken with disease, and taken away
from their families for years at a time on terrible
food and no pay all. Somehow or other, the Articles
of Confederation in that government that was in Philadelphia managed
to do it. Also, ironically, the same summer, this tumultuous,
(11:58):
troubled summer venteen eighty seven, under the Articles of Confederation
was past. The Northwest Ordinance. Think about this. Think The
Northwest Ordinance created a new part of the country for
the future's development. Five states would result from it, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
(12:21):
and Wisconsin, a territory bigger than the entire nation of France,
center of the Great Lakes, one of the most valuable,
most American places on the map. And they specified there
would be no slavery before we even had a constitution,
(12:42):
no slavery in those states, and that there would be
public education, neither of which would wind up in the Constitution.
So they were ahead of the Constitution in that respect.
So to just dismiss the Articles of Confederation as having
been largely a failure is to not understand what really happened.
(13:05):
The fact that there was no slavery in those states
would change our whole history, And of course it was
admirable in the extreme, the fact that they saw that
education was essential to our whole system, to its success
and did something about it, didn't just talk about it.
Jefferson said, any nation expects to be ignorant and free,
expects what never was and never will be. But there's
(13:29):
nothing in the Constitution about that. The other point I
want to make is that the Constitution isn't a success entirely.
Martin Luther King put it very well that it was
a promissory note because it ducked it avoided the issue
of slavery. The issue with the ultimate lead into the
(13:52):
worst calamity in the history of our country, the Civil War.
Six hundred thousand people died because of slavery in that war,
six hundred thousand people, and that's not counting all the
people that went home with one arm or no legs.
(14:13):
We are accountable for what we do. History shows that,
and we are capable of rising up out of terrible
troubled times and doing something something thrilling. That is a
symbol of affirmation. And the Constitution is that even before
(14:37):
the amendments were added the Bill of Rights, even before
the fourteenth Amendment was finally added, ending slavery, we keep
fixing it now. Whether the Constitution should be taken literally
or should be judged by the temper in the moment
and the problems of the moment by the jurists is
(14:58):
continuing issue. The great effort was to find a middle way.
That's what they were struggling for in that hot broom
with the windows closed, to find the middle way together.
And they succeeded in doing it, and it might not
have gone that way. That's the other thing it didn't have.
History is never on a track. We're often taught this followed,
(15:21):
this follow that followed that got to memorize it'll be
on the test on Wednesday, and therefore it had to
come out that way. It never had to come out
any one way or another. And what they achieved at
Philadelphia was like nothing else that had ever been achieved.
Words on paper, a constitution on paper, a written constitution,
(15:44):
still still the law of the land, still part of
who we are and what we believe. There are only five,
I believe, colleges or universities or institutions of higher learning
in our country that require their students to take at
least one term on the Constitution. Three of them are
(16:08):
military academies. Now, if you say to someone, do you
think it's a good idea that officers in the military
should know the Constitution? Oh, yes, they certainly should. What
about all the rest of us? What about all of us,
not just incoming people from elsewhere in the world applying
to become citizens, to have to take a very good,
serious test in American history. We all should. It's part
(16:34):
of our job, part of being a citizen. And it's
infinitely interesting. I think that everybody should go to Philadelphia
at some point and go into that room and think
about what was done. There. Think about those human beings
and they're frailies. Some of them got in a lot
(16:54):
of trouble later on, personally or professionally. Some of them peaked,
as we would say then, but while they were there,
they were using the best ability they had. They were thinking,
this wasn't a sound bite opportunity to be practiced by
(17:16):
sound bite rains. These are serious.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
People, and indeed serious people they were, and they were
certainly not sound bite people or sound bite minds. It's
why we have not the oldest nation, but we certainly
have the oldest constitution. Is what those guys did on
those days in Philadelphia, those sweltering days, was truly a miracle.
(17:44):
When we come back more of how the Constitution came
to be here on our American stories, and we returned
(18:09):
to our American stories and the final portion of our
story on the Constitution and its drafters and signers with
the late great David McCullough, let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Some of them got in a lot of trouble later on,
personally but professionally. Some of them peaked, as we would
say then, but while they were there, they were using
the best ability they had. They were thinking. This wasn't
a sound bite opportunity to be practiced by sound bite brains.
(18:48):
These were serious people. Now. Most of them, over half
of them, were under forty years old. Don't think of
them as wise old founding fathers. Some of them were
like Franklin. Most of them were quite young, but they'd
had the experience of the war, which did not make
(19:09):
them anything but versed, steeped in the realities of tragedy
and accomplishment and courage and faith. Look at the First
Amendment alone, for example, what would we be without that?
Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press.
(19:33):
What does that mean? It means freedom of expression, freedom
to use your mind, freedom to have ideas. One historian
is called history the inexhaustible storehouse of ideas. Think of
it as that. Don't think of history as memorizing dates
or quotations from great pronouncements. You can look those things
(19:56):
up in a book. Think of it as an adventure.
Think of it as a human, unfolding, human story of
infinite interest, in which more happens that is unbelievable than
happens in most works of fiction. The truth is often
much stranger than fiction, and more illuminating, and fortunately a
(20:20):
great deal of it has been superbly written down the ages.
Those people are all teaching us something, and they're asking
us to get to know them better and to get
to know what they went through to achieve what they
did in difficult times. We just celebrated the tenth anniversary
of the attack on the World Trade Center and on
(20:43):
the Pentagon here, and I remember vividly I was here
when it happened. People on television elsewhere in the press
saying this the darkest, most difficult time we've ever been through. Well,
it is indeed a very dark and very difficult time,
but we have been through worse. And one of the
values of history is that it keeps it makes impossible,
(21:04):
helps you to keep the dark times in proportion. Other
people have faced as difficult or worse, and look what
they did. That should be an inspiration. The story of
the writing of the Constitution of our country should be
an inspiration to us. Now. It's very important that we
know what they wrote. But I want to stress one
(21:28):
more thing. It's very important that we know also what
they read, because we are what we read. What were Washington, Jefferson, Franklin,
John Adams Jefferson. What were they reading when they were students?
What were they reading through life? From which writers? Which
(21:50):
words were they taking inspiration? One of them we know
was Alexander Pope, the great English poet, and his eg
is LG. A Man. Act well, you're part there, all
the honor lies. They all knew it, they all quoted it.
(22:10):
What's that mean? Act well, you're a part history, Luck, fate,
God choose about how you wish to say. It has
cast you in a role. Play it the best you can.
Why for money, No for power, no celebrity, no honor.
(22:34):
We don't hear much about honor these days. Act well,
you're part. They're all the honor lies. Now that doesn't
mean they always were able to do that, but they
were striving for that objective. And if you understand that,
you can understand who they were and why they were
the way they were a great deal more Scincly, in
(23:00):
seventeen seventy nine, a full eight years before the Constitutional Convention,
Massachusetts passed its constitution. And the Constitution of Massachusetts was
not just a harbinger or a preview of what was
to come in the national Constitution. It was a model.
(23:23):
Everything has its antecedents. Everything has some hint, some forecasts
in previous times, and in this Massachusetts Constitution is a
clause a paragraph written by John Adams. John Adams was
not in Philadelphia, nor was Jefferson, as I'm sure you know,
because they were serving as diplomats in Europe, but they
(23:47):
were reacting to it. They were keenly interested in all
the latest news. When the word came through that had
finally been passed, Adams wrote immediately to say, it's marvelous.
It's a tremendous accomplishment, but it needs a bill of rights.
Jefferson did not say much about needing a bill of
rights for quite some time, but eventually came around seeing
(24:08):
it that way. But the paragraph that Adams wrote for
the Massachusetts Constitution is the note I would like to
conclude my remarks to you this morning on When he
wrote it, he was sure that it would be rejected,
but he just had to do it ease his own mind.
It was passed unanimously and is still part of the
(24:31):
Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Wisdom and knowledge, as
well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people,
is necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties,
and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages
of education in various parts of the country and among
(24:52):
the different orders of people, in other words, everybody. It
shall be the duty, the duty of legislators and magistrates,
in all future periods of this Commonwealth to cherish the
interests of literature and the sciences in all the public
(25:14):
schools and grammar schools for the promotion of agriculture. Now
listen to this list. It includes everything virtually for the
promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a
(25:35):
natural history of the country. To countenance and inculcate the
principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity,
industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity,
(25:56):
good humor. There shall be good humor, all all social affections,
and generous sentiments among the people. Who could write anything
like that today and get it passed. His faith and
education was that as the bulwark of society. When he
(26:20):
was a young man, he wrote the following. John Adams
was a farmer's son. John Adams was the only founding
father who never owned a slave as a matter of principle.
He was twenty five years old when he wrote in
his little diary, I must judge for myself, But how
(26:43):
can I judge? How can anyone judge unless his mind
has been opened and enlarged by reading. And on that
I closed my remarks, and thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
And you've been listening to the late great David McCullough
telling the story of the Constitution back in twenty eleven
at the National Archives, and he said something so interesting.
To talk about what they wrote, We had to talk
about and have to talk about what they were reading,
the story of the Constitution, and in the end, the
(27:20):
story of us here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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