Editor’s note: For years, the Deseret News’ editorial page carried the epigraph: “We stand for the Constitution of the United States as having been divinely inspired.” In honor of Constitution Month, the Deseret News is publishing a variety of articles examining the Constitution’s continued importance.
We learn from what we read, what is taught in school, the news we consume, from personal experience and by what we “pick up” through conversation and observation.
A number of years ago, a prominent couple in our community invited David McCullough to speak at a local gathering. When McCullough arrived in Salt Lake City, he made time for a few visits. I was contacted by the host couple who asked if I could arrange a meeting between McCullough and a prominent leader in our community.
I was invited to be a part of that meeting. Just five of us were there, and the atmosphere was cordial and informal. The conversation turned to two of McCullough’s books: “1776” and “John Adams.”
The discussion of “1776” eventually turned to the Continental Army’s retreat across the East River in late August 1776. McCullough painted a detailed picture of the precarious position in which Washington’s army found itself, a situation so advantageous for the British that they were confident it could end the war.
However, in the quiet dark of night, Washington ferried boat after boat loaded with soldiers across the river to the New York side, all the while with no wind sufficient to allow British ships near enough to discover them.
When day broke, there were still 9,000 of Washington’s troops trapped when a thick fog descended on the scene allowing the last troops to cross the river in total silence to safety, thus saving the Continental Army from destruction and altering the course of history.
In McCullough’s book, he writes of the fog that changed history: “Incredibly, yet again, circumstances — fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as would be said so often — intervened.” In the intimacy of our meeting, he was less equivocal. There he stated categorically that he believed God had intervened to save the army.
The discussion of his book “John Adams” was more wide ranging. Of him, of the Founding Fathers more broadly, and of the Revolutionary War and the writing of the Constitution, McCullough said, and I paraphrase:
I have made my life’s work the study of history and world events. In my opinion, never before or since in the history of mankind has a more uniquely qualified group of men ever assembled to undertake a more momentous task than the founding of a new nation — the combination of men and cause is unequalled in world history. They went up against the formidable military might of Britain, beat them, then settled into writing a constitution which was unique in its approach to human freedoms and rights, then saw it through to its enactment and implementation.
Taken individually, the Founding Fathers were remarkable; together, they were nothing short of a historical phenomenon. Each, in his respective role, contributed in his own unique way to what now is acknowledged as a miracle in modern government. During the stressful Constitutional Convention, tempers flared and opposing positions were posited and argued passionately. Until compromises eventually were made, it came perilously close to failure.
Marveling at how the delegates to the Constitutional Convention finally came together through compromise, James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” wrote: “all the deputations (delegates) composing the convention were satisfactorily accommodated by the final act, or were induced to accede to it by a deep conviction of the necessity of sacrificing private opinions and partial interests to the public good”.
Brilliant and determined men, a great cause, and compromise combined to make a formidable combination.
I believe the hand of the Almighty was involved in guiding those debates, and that God “... established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose.”
Madison expressed the same thought years earlier:
“The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution” (italics added).
Of course, when we hear that these men were “wise” we should not infer that they were perfect, for neither the men nor the document they enacted were perfect. Even a cursory examination of the lives of the Founding Fathers reveals ample evidence of human imperfection. Our “wonderfully imperfect” Constitution was the product of heated discussion, different points of view and compromise. One of the most odious of these compromises, one which allowed slavery to continue in certain states, stood until it was “amended out” by the 13th Amendment. But we must accept that without those early compromises, the Constitution would not have been enacted.
Compromise made the Constitution possible, a document that Rex E. Lee referred to as “probably the most successful governmental undertaking in the history of civilized life.”
In 1964, I took a class taught by Francis Wormuth, who held the title of Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah. On the opening day of class, he began by asking, “What is the Constitution?” Ours was a small class comprised of perhaps 15 or 20 students. Half a dozen hands went up. After each response, Dr. Wormuth repeated his question, “What is the Constitution?” No answer quite satisfied him.
Finally, the wise professor answered his own question: “The Constitution is whatever nine old men in long black robes say it is.” (It would take another 17 years before the first woman was appointed to the Supreme Court.) I have thought about that first day of class a great deal over the years and have come to believe that, while some Supreme Court decisions have “stretched” the Constitution, they have not broken it, and many of the most egregious decisions eventually were overturned.
This “stretching” while not “breaking” seems consistent with Alexander Hamilton’s assessment that “the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.”
I defer to the opinion expressed by McCullough that the Founding Fathers were indeed the most remarkable group of men ever assembled to grapple with the most significant attempt to create a nation in all of human history.
I believe that the genius of the separation of powers structure works, and that even “9 jurists in long black robes” do not determine ultimate and forever outcomes; balance eventually reasserts itself.
I agree with Madison’s assessment that without compromise, the Constitutional Convention would have ended in failure and that the delegates came to understand the importance of give and take, “the necessity of sacrificing private opinions and partial interests to the public good.”
As expressed in scripture and by Madison, I believe that God’s hand guided the Founding Fathers in their deliberations and debates.
And finally, I am satisfied that, while it is imperfect, the Constitution is, as Rex E. Lee pointed out, “probably the most successful governmental undertaking in the history of civilized life.”
Richard G. Hinckley served as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2005 to 2011.