I wrote the following letter to editor.
How little we Americans know of our own history. The editorial cartoon in Sunday's paper is a perfect example, comparing our current Congress unfavorably to the Founding Fathers writing the Constitution. Our own mythology tells of a group of giants, gathering in Philadelphia, sitting down together and writing a document for the ages. Reality is a much different story. In many ways, the members of the Constitutional Convention acted exactly like our present Congress, fighting over issues, arguing about procedures, yelling at each other, threatening to go home. The Convention itself lasted from May through September. The number of issues that raised not just debate, but tempers, are too numerous to list here, but include things like how to elect Senators, the Electoral College (which we are still arguing about today), representation in the House , and perhaps most bitter, the debate over how slaves should be counted towards representation. They finally agreed to count each slave as three-fifths of a person. The cartoon suggests that the Founding Fathers did not defer difficult decision until later. They let a lot of thorny issues slide by in order to get the Document passed. After the document was written, several states refused to ratify because there was no Bill of Rights included in the original. Only the promise of, originally twelve, but finally ten amendments guaranteeing personal freedoms got the Constitution ratified. And still, many issues were not solved, as the Presidential election of 1800 showed so well. Twenty seven amendments later, we still aren't happy. And interestingly, amendment 27, was originally proposed in 1789 and only finally ratified in 1992. The subject of that amendment? Limiting the manner in which Congressmen get paid.
Here is our image.
Napoleon once said, "History is myth agreed upon." So much for the writing of our Constitution.
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