And so, the founders of the beautiful young country wrote a famous document that would serve as their keystone. This document was called... theArticles of Confederation. According to this document, the various regions (or states) of this country were to act as their own miniature nations, and only answered back to a small federal government consisting of a single "Continental Congress". In this manner, the young country would be able to avoid the tyranny from which they had so recently escaped from.
While the mechanisms in the Articles of Confederation sounded perfect on paper, in practice, they simply did not work. The different regions of the young country had different currency, presented conflicting treaties with other countries, and even began bickering with one another. Something had to be done if the new country were to retain its new independence.
Luckily, a young scholar from one of the larger regions had ideas. He called together a convention in a well-known city to "re-write the Articles of Confederation". In reality, the young scholar knew that no matter how much the Articles of Confederation we re-written, they would never work, and so instead he meant to write an entirely new constitution with some of the best representatives of the young country.
On the very first day of the convention, one of the young scholar's friends made these purposes known. He proposed making an entirely new constitution based on the young scholar's government model introduced in what was called the Virginia Plan. In contrast to the government of the Articles of Confederation which had only one branch (the Continental Congress), the government introduced in the Virginia Plan had three: the legislative (the Congress, divided into two houses) the executive (the President) and the judicial (the Supreme Court). These three branches would make, enforce, and interpret the law. They would be strong enough to keep the nation together, but since there were three of them and there were numerous checks and balances, it would be almost impossible for any one branch to accumulate too much power.
It took a great deal of effort to convince the delegates that an all-new Constitution would be a good idea. The representatives had just been through a very oppressive government. To some, the Virginia Plan looked too powerful and potentially tyrannical. A few representatives even left the convention because they thought it was going in the wrong direction.
From May until September, the remaining representatives debated every last detail of the new constitution. They argued about how many Executive(s) we should have, how long the different terms should be, if representation should be equal or proportional, if slaves would count towards representation, and more. Every last detail had to be able to stand the test of time.
Finally, the new Constitution was finished. But the greatest effort was still to come. This Constitution had to be ratified. And soon there were people who were earnestly and fervently fighting for the demise of the document.
The opponents to this new constitution reasoned against it with several different arguments. They claimed that the fancy mechanisms in the Constitution were all "smoke and mirrors" and that they didn't actually do anything. They argued that the Federal government in the Constitution was too strong, and that it would eventually turn to tyranny. But their main argument was that this new Constitution did not contain a bill of rights. They argued that without a bill of rights, any nation founded upon the Constitution would crumble. In order to secure ratification, the supporters of the Constitution promised to add a bill of rights if the Constitution was ratified.
In the end, the Constitution was ratified, but no-one seemed to be worried about making good on their promise to add a bill of rights. That is, until the young scholar was elected to one of the houses in the Congress. He painstakingly drafted and proposed 12 statements to be added to the Constitution. 10 of these statements became the Bill of Rights, and the 11th was added to the Constitution nearly 200 years later.
The Happily Ever After of this story is yet to be determined. And it is up to us whether the ending of this story will indeed be a Happily Ever After or if the sacrifices of these great men will have been in vain. Will we let these documents be whittled down, clause by clause, until there is nothing left of them? Will we allow them to gather dust while power-hungry leaders become the tyranny the founders were so afraid of? Or will we stand up, will we read them and study them, will we stay true to these documents that have stood the test of time?
It is up to us.
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