Posted by JENNIFER MITNICK at 7/13/2010 11:05:00 AM
On Thursday, July 1, 2010 we heard a lecture by John Kaminski, Director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin. He told us that he sometimes goes into middle school classrooms to speak about the Constitution, so I could tell that he appreciated not only scholarship but also teaching about the Constitution. Professor Kaminski opened by saying "The Constitution and the federal government is perfect. There's not a thing wrong with it." Of course, we all laughed. So then he said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Ok, if you think it's imperfect, let's get rid of it, call a new Constitutional Convention and write a new one." Nobody in the room thought that was a good idea, even though we all agreed that the government wasn't perfect. Professor Kaminski then said "That's the exact situation that occurred in 1787." In 1787, most people agreed that the Articles were flawed (the government needed the power to tax and regulate commerce), but the American people would not have favored getting rid of the current government and developing a new model altogether (just like in the modern example he set up above). I thought it was clever of him to set up the situation in this way. It's very hard to put yourself into the mindset of someone in 1787. However, if I suggested to you that we get rid of our current government and create a whole new model, you would probably react in the same way as many people did in 1787! That's why they had to keep the Constitutional Convention a secret and why Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay had to write the Federalist Papers to convince New York to ratify the Constitution. Professor Kaminski then talked about his approach to writing history. He said, "Don't fall in love with your subject if you write a biography." He explained that the founders were not gods -- they were men that were flawed. He also said that you should "start with a clean slate" when you write history. You can't say that that the Constitution is wonderful because you know what will happen later. People living back in 1787 didn't know what would happen later, so as a historian, you need to try to think as they did in order to write about them successfully. History could very easily have happened quite differently than it did. For example, during the Battle of the Monongahela in 1755 during the French and Indian War, General Braddock was killed. George Washington, however, had four bullet holes through his coat, had his hat shot from his head, had two horses shot out from under him and killed, and one horse wounded and he still survived. What would have happened if he had been killed? What would have happened if he had been given a commission in the British army, like he wanted? Perhaps he might have been the one captured at Yorktown instead of Cornwallis. What would have happened in 1783 if Madison had left Congress and fell off his horse and drowned in the Delware River? As a historian, you have to remind yourself not to write from the perspective of the present. In keeping with his explanation that the founders were real men that were flawed, Professor Kaminski explained that both Madison and Thomas Jefferson, although they opposed slavery, both believed that blacks were inferior to whites. They supported a three part system for eliminating slavery. First, they wanted gradual and compensated emancipation. Secondly, they wanted colonization. Madison and Jefferson believed that blacks would never forgive whites for what they did, so it would be better to send blacks back to Africa or create black colonies in the West Indies. Most of the African Americans in slavery at the time had been born in America and would have never seen Africa. So to people today, sending African Americans back to Africa and dropping them off to start a colony would be immoral, inhumane, and wrong. Jefferson and Madison, however, knew that whites would continue to expand west, and thought that blacks would be better off living free, but living separately from whites. The