In 1787, the Constitution was being framed in strict secrecy. Nearing the end, some citizens gathered outside Constitutional Hall, anxious to find out what had been produced behind closed doors. Immediately upon the framers’ emergence from the hall, as the story goes, a Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Straight away, Franklin said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

When I first heard this story, I found Franklin’s response a curious one to make. Now I understand what he meant. For it takes so much effort, such selfless behavior, and enormous monetary sacrifice by a country’s citizenry to keep a republic free and operational, and a Constitution intact and fully functioning, serving all its citizenry, rather than just the rich and powerful. Today, we can see clearly that it has not been dutifully done.

I was shocked and dismayed to learn my idealistic view that our Constitution was written for the good of all Americans in mind was not quite accurate. After doing a little digging and reading a lot of more complete histories than I got in school, it became clear that it was written to favor the upper class, male landowners, who were the only people eligible to vote when the Constitution was ratified in September 19, 1789, and the Electoral College came into being, ensuring the lesser populated but richer slave states got electoral power from the enslaved Black population, though they were prohibited from voting well into the 1960s.

Still, didn’t Abraham Lincoln imply that the Constitution was written for all Americans when, in the last line of his Gettysburg address, he exhorted his contemporaries to maintain the legacy?

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. [Emphasis mine.]

I confess, the fact that wealthy landowners were favored in our Constitution only came to my attention a few years ago. One writer who opened my eyes was Ralph Zierk, now deceased, whose letter to the editor on the dailypress.net, titled “Constitution Favors the Upper Class,” dug into Howard Zinn territory, a view of history from the We the People’s standpoint rather than the ruling classes’. He claimed the Constitution was “an instrument of class power intended by our framers to preserve the influence of property owners (wealthy) over the American political economy.… Despite popular claims of a U.S. democracy, the Constitution was intended to blunt the possibility of the people from acquiring power, or making effective changes in the structure of government, in particular, property (wealthy) relations between the elite and the marginalized.”

This blog, posted February 18, 2010, seems no longer to be available, and Zierk died in 2015, so let me reprint this passage that I downloaded to my computer, in which he outlines a perspective I had not encountered:

A majority of the framers were lawyers with the most holding great wealth in terms of land, and quite often slaves.

Many had manufacturing and shipping interests, over half were creditors, and 40 of the 55 held government bonds.

As you can see, the framers had a direct economic interest in establishing a strong central government at the expense of the needs of the majority of the people.

Manufacturers needed a strong government to establish protective tariffs and to subsidize industrialization. Moneylenders wanted to stop the liberal printing of paper money to pay off debts. Land speculators needed a military force to protect them as they grabbed Indian land on the frontier.

Slave-holders sought federal security against revolts and runaways, and bondholders needed a strong central government able to raise monies via taxation to ensure that their bonds from the war of independence would be honored.

These men had strong class motives for establishing a federal system and were quite candid about their interests. John Adams contended that the U.S. ought to be governed by “the rich, the well-born, and the able,” and he believed that democracy was the “most ignoble, unjust and detestable form of government.” Alexander Hamilton said that the masses were “turbulent and changing, and that they seldom judge or determined right,” and Jefferson said working people were “panders of vice and the instruments by which the liberties of the country are generally overturned.” [No reference for these quotes, I’m sorry to say.]

Our Constitution was written to maintain and extend the privileges of the upper class, to protect their property (wealth) interests, and this thinking of class, privilege and economic interest is a very foundation of our current problems.

As you might understand, the view that the blueprint for democracy primarily supported the wealthy and privileged and not the common people was a real eye opener for me.

Long ago, I believed part of the American Way of governing was to help those in need. My awareness that this was not true started with Vietnam, and going forward, year after year, I came to believe the structure of our government was not at all concerned with providing hope and a sense of security for our future, the commitment to things being better for each generation, rather than that any individual politician is allowed to debase and corrupt the electorate. Which seems to be case.

I have now learned that many of the 55 wealthy framers of the Constitution didn’t have the best interest of We the People in mind at all when they signed the Constitution. No wonder Franklin wondered if we could save our Republic from destruction.

So how do we move forward? Luckily, the constitution is fluid and amendable, and its amendments have improved it 25 times—and damaged it once or twice as well. Nevertheless, it gives us the power, if we have the courage to use it, to demand that the values written in the preamble be constantly renewed and adhered to:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

These values of inclusive unity, justice for all, a good life at home, a secure life from attack, a concern for the wellbeing of everyone, and the idea of liberty as a blessing for generations to come are values we have written extensively about in Political Straight Talk. The liberal thinker and executive leader of the Dream Corps, Van Jones, agrees with us on the need for a “values reset” with his call for the development of a “Love Army.” I don’t know how Benjamin Franklin would have thought about that, but as a practical as well as lusty man, he might have just said, “Whatever works.”