Twelfth Amendment

5.3 A New Birth of Freedom, Part 1 | constitutional law

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• published: 10 May 2014
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5.3 A New Birth of Freedom, Part 1 | constitutional law Welcome back. We've come to another critical turning point in the story of the American Constitution. We've pretty much finished a conversation about the Founding Era. An era that generates not just the original Constitution, and and, before it the Declaration of Independence, but, that, that also includes the first set of constitutional amendments. The Bill of Rights amendments. 1 to 10, and the 11th and 12th amendments that follow shortly thereafter. The 12th amendment's adopted in the era of Thomas Jefferson. It cements his vision of of a more democratic and, and frankly a more slavocratic presidential election system. And with that amendment, the founding era. The era of of, of, folks who actually had lived through the American Revolution. and, and made and incorporated some of the ideas of the American Revolution, some of its themes, into our, our foundational document. That era comes to a close. And the next set of amendments aren't going to happen for more than a half century. So now is a good time to just to pause and to, to just recap a bit our 3 themes of democracy, national security, and slavery. Let's just trace, just a bit, the connections between democracy and national security to begin with. Let's remember that there is no Constitution. It just doesn't exist unless Americans are able to successfully, not merely declare their independence from Great Britain, but establish that. And they need to establish that on a battle-, on a field of battle. Through a long and, and bloody war. And they barely win that war. They are very lucky to win that war. George Washington understands that, that providence smiled on, on him, again, and again, and again. It's won only with the help of the French at critical moments, and you can't count on the French, in the future. And so, Washington understands there's a geostrategic, a national security imperative, to create a stronger central government. because remember, the Articles of Confederation just aren't strong enough to achieve their basic purpose, which is common defense. The Declaration says what we're against. We're against Britain. And it says what we're for in terms of principles, we're for unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, no taxation without representation, jury trials and so on. But how is that going to be compete oh those principles, how those principles going to be manifest in a new system of government? Well state constitutions emerge replacing colonial governments. And at the continental level, we have this Articles of Confederation, which is a loose league, an alliance, a treaty, a confederacy of sorts, to coordinate military opposition to King George. And that alliance has a, had as its central purpose, basically foreign affairs and national security, common defense, and it didn't work well enough because, it was premised on the idea that individual states would pay into continental coffers, to support, the army and the war, individual states would provide the, the, the soldiers, and, and the problem is the individual states really didn't pony up. They didn't pay when they were supposed to, they didn't always provide the manpower they had promised to, and what do you do if Virginia doesn't pay up? You can't put Virginia in jail, so, the Constitution emerges as a national security alternative to the article of confederation, and, and and a foreign affairs alternative to the Articles of Confederation. In foreign affairs, the Articles of Confederation promise that America's that this continental assembly would, would make treaties with foreign nations. But the problem is, individual states sometimes violated those treaties, and then gave the foreign nations an excuse to not keep their end of the bargain. So Britain, at the end of the Revolutionary War, promised to abandon a whole bunch of forts. And it, it, it refused to, to honor it, using as its excuse, well, different states, haven't followed the treaty of peace. So since individual states were violating the treaty of peace, Britain didn't have to keep up its end which was to evacuate the forts