http://cyberjournal.org/cj/authors/fresia/
Toward an American Revolution
Exposing the Constitution
and other IllusionsJerry Fresia
Copyright © 1988 by Jerry Fresia
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/authors/fresia/
Brian Price, an American historian who has spent countless hours
studying early American elites' rise to power, asks a similar
question: "Is it possible for a class which exterminates the native
peoples of the Americas, replaces them by raping Africa for humans it
then denigrates and dehumanizes as slaves, while cheapening and
degrading its own working class - is it possible for such a class to
create democracy, equality, and to advance the cause of human
freedom?" The implicit answer is, "No. Of course not."
Consider certain features of the lives of three men. The first was a
very wealthy man. In l787, many considered him the richest man in all
the thirteen states. His will of l789 revealed that he owned 35,000
acres in Virginia and 1,119 acres in Maryland. He owned property in
Washington valued (in l799 dollars) at $l9,132, in Alexandria at
$4,000, in Winchester at $400, and in Bath at $800. He also held
$6,246 worth of U.S. securities, $10,666 worth of shares in the James
River Company, $6,800 worth of stock in the Bank of Columbia, and
$1,000 worth of stock in the Bank of Alexandria. His livestock was
valued at $15,653. As early as 1773, he had enslaved 216 human beings
who were not emancipated until after he and his wife had both died.2
The second man was a lawyer. He often expressed his admiration of
monarchy and, correspondingly, his disdain and contempt for common
people. His political attitudes were made clear following an incident
which occurred in Boston on March 5, 1770. On that day, a number of
ropemakers got into an argument with British soldiers whose
occupation of Boston had threatened the ropemakers' jobs. A fight
broke out and an angry crowd developed. The British soldiers
responded by firing into the crowd, killing several. The event has
since become known as the Boston Massacre. The soldiers involved in
the shooting were later acquitted thanks, in part, to the skills of
the lawyer we have been describing, who was selected as the defense
attorney for the British. He described the crowd as "a motley rabble
of saucy boys, negroes, and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish
jack tarrs."3
The life of the third man was more complex, more filled with
contradiction than the other two. He was wealthy. He owned over
10,000 acres and by 1809 he had enslaved 185 human beings. States one
biographer, "He lived with the grace and elegance of many British
lords; his house slaves alone numbered twenty-five." Yet slavery
caused him great anxiety; he seems to have sincerely desired the
abolition of slavery but was utterly incapable of acting in a way
which was consistent with his abolitionist sympathies. He gave his
daughter twenty-five slaves as a wedding present, for example. And
when confronted with his indebtedness of $107,000 at the end of his
life in 1826, he noted that at least his slaves constituted liquid
capital. He had several children by one of his slaves and thus found
himself in the position of having to face public ridicule or keep up
the elaborate pretense that his slave children did not exist. He
chose the latter course and arranged, discreetly, to have them "run
away."4
Who are these three men? We know them well. They are among
our "Founding Fathers," or Framers as we shall call them. They are
the first three presidents of the United States, George Washington,
John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.
The brief sketches of these men are but glimpses into their personal
lives, but some of the details are significantly revealing. They
suggest that the Framers, far from champions of the people, were rich
and powerful men who sought to maintain their wealth and status by
figuring out ways to keep common people down. Moreover, I shall
present additional evidence about the lives of the Framers, the
Constitution, and the period in which it was written which supports
the contention that the Framers were profoundly anti-democratic and
afraid of the people. Some of the information may be surprising. In
1782, for example, Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris believed
that a stronger central government was needed to "restrain the
democratic spirit" in the states. Eric Foner tells us that Morris's
private correspondence reveals "only contempt for the common people."
5 Benjamin Rush, "the distinguished scientist and physician" from
Philadelphia and Framer (although he was not at the
Constitutional Convention), would often refer to common people
as "scum." Alexander Hamilton called the people "a great beast."6 Not
all the Framers resorted to name calling, but it is clear that they
feared and distrusted the political participation of common people.
Perhaps even more shocking than the personal opinions of the Framers,
is the process by which the Constitution was ratified. As described
in more detail in Chapter 3, secrecy, deceit and even violence played
key roles in the Constitution's passage. These unsavory tactics were
used by the Framers and their allies because the majority of the
people were against the ratification of the Constitution. What is
striking about this historical fact is its similarity with public
policy and elite decision-making today. At times, the interests of
elites and the public interest coincides. When it does not, however,
elites tend to go ahead anyway. And because so much of what corporate-
government elites believe to be in the national
interest violates accepted standards of decency, many public
policies are formulated and carried out covertly. But the point here
is that covert and anti-democratic measures are not new developments.
They have been the method of guaranteeing class rule ever since the
Framers decided that they needed the present political system to
protect their power and privilege.
It is contrary to everything we've been taught about the Framers to
hear that they felt contempt for common people and that their
Constitutional Convention was profoundly undemocratic. Indeed such
accusations sound even less familiar in the context of the late 1980s
when celebrations of the Constitution's bicentennial have brought
adulation of this country's political origins to new and even more
mindless heights. In its issue celebrating the bicentennial, Newsweek
gushed, "The educated men in post-Revolutionary America," (and one
must presume that this includes the Framers), "embraced the political
tradition of participatory democracy, the social pretense of virtual
classlessness and the economic fact of absolute equality of
opportunity." 7 The "Founding Fathers" are always the champions of
freedom, justice, and democracy. "Reverence is due to those men...,"
states Time magazine in its special bicentennial issue. 8
Books and celebrity television specials packed with familiar myths
and illusions have been churned out by the dozens. The Constitution
itself is "the greatest single document struck off by the hand and
mind of man" we are told by the the Commission on the Bicentennial of
the the U.S. Constitution. Thus on the 200th anniversary of the
completion of the Constitution, former chief justice Warren Burger,
on national TV, led the nation's school children and teachers in a
recitation of the Preamble ("We the people...") and President Reagan
led the country in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. One of
the many books honoring our Constitution, We The People by Peter
Spier, begins by stating that the "U.S. Constitution is the oldest
and most significant written document of our history." He goes on to
say that the Constitution "has come to symbolize freedom, justice,
equality, and hope for American citizens as individuals and as a
collective, democratic nation. For two hundred years the
Constitution has provided its people with rights, liberties, and a
free society that people of other nations can only dream of." How
familiar Spier's words sound to those of us who have grown up in the
United States. From our earliest days we are taught to glorify the
Framers and the great American "democracy" that is their legacy. Even
as adults we are still expected to accept the same grade-school,
cartoon-like version of our founding.
As citizens we are supposed to be like the nation's school children
who are given no choice but to stand by their desks and mindlessly
recite a pledge of allegiance to a flag, a pledge that was introduced
into schools at the turn of the century to counter the influence of
ideas that immigrant school children had received from their parents
and from distant lands. The fundamental purpose of bicentennial
ideology, then, is to encourage us not to explore competing ways of
thinking or to ask hard questions about our heritage. We are not
encouraged to think because it is understood that thinking sometimes
leads to disagreement, or worse, to the challenging of some sacred
text. Instead we are encouraged to believe. Efforts to transform
thinking citizens into believing citizens, we should point out,
really began at just about the time that the Framers were planning
the Constitutional Convention. Disturbing symptoms that common people
were ignoring customs of social deference and were
beginning to think for themselves led some Framers such as John
Dickinson to urge that political instruments be devised to
protect "the worthy against the licentious." Benjamin Rush, in a
proposal entitled "The Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,"
stated: "I consider it possible to convert men into republican
machines. This must be done, if we expect them to perform their parts
properly, in the great machine of the government of the state." And
so it must be done today, if people are to "perform their parts
properly." The aim of the ideological manager is, in effect, the
creation of millions of "republican machines."9
Common sense tells us that people who spend a good deal of time
either acquiring or protecting a vast personal empire or defending a
king's soldiers against the dispossessed would also have believed
that the possession of enormous privilege was just and that
protection of that privilege ought to be sought and maintained at
considerable cost. Common sense should further compel us to wonder
whether such people could write a constitution that would effectively
transfer power from their few hands into the hands of the many, that
is, into the hands of the poor, the debtors and people without
property. Brian Price, an American historian who has spent countless
hours studying early American elites' rise to power, asks a similar
question: "Is it possible for a class which exterminates the native
peoples of the Americas, replaces them by raping Africa for humans it
then denigrates and dehumanizes as slaves, while cheapening and
degrading its own working class - is it possible for such a class
to create democracy, equality, and to advance the cause of human
freedom?" The implicit answer is, "No. Of course not."
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/authors/fresia/