Why the Declaration Isn’t the Supreme Law of the Land

Assembly Hall, where the Constitution was signed.

On the 4th of July, 1776, the British subjects of thirteen colonies in North America declared through a makeshift congress that they were gunning for total independence from Britain.  They were already in a state of war against the British, but it was a defensive war against occupation, a war without aims.

Since the fighting had broken out a year earlier, representatives of the American colonies had applied themselves to the problem of how to win the war, a war against one of the world’s great military powers.  The Declaration successfully articulated the colonies’ grievances against the British Crown.  It presented a catalog of grievances against the monarchy, using the language of natural rights to justify throwing off a remote government that Americans feared would reduce them to “slaves.”  The Declaration legitimated war on the grounds that the British government did not represent the will of Americans.  Britain’s colonial system condemned Americans to live under an authority that was not of their own making, in which they had no voice.

The Declaration was a radical document, a glorious aspirational document that, beyond firing up the colonists, has inspired oppressed people to seek independence, equality, and self-determination down through the years.  With its ringing assertion of each person’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and its rejection of government without “the consent of the governed,” the Declaration gave the colonists a sound philosophical justification for rejecting British rule.  Their rebellion was justified because becoming a self-governing nation was their aim.

Inspiring in its idealism, the Declaration was never intended as a blueprint for national government.  The Continental Congress that approved it never approached the stature of the English system of King and Parliament that the colonists threw off.  The Declaration’s fiery phrases recalling past grievances couldn’t sustain the Revolution as it dragged on.  Having put the super-capably George Washington in charge of the war effort, Congress became diffident.  Enthusiasm waned.  Each state wanted what was best for itself, and no state wanted to give up much of its newly gained independence for the sake of a more powerful collectivity.

General Washington had to beg and cajole Congress for the basics to keep the Revolution going.  Valley Forge was the shameful nadir of the states’ indifference and irresponsibility. Continental troops, encamped there for the winter, perished not from battle but for want of human necessities such as clothing, shelter, and food.  Washington despised the Continental Congress for its weaknesses, blaming it for a war that was unduly costly and long.

Peace and independence came after eight tedious years.  Congress’s deficiencies became even more glaring once the colonists’ common enemy, Britain, had been expelled.  The fragile nationhood achieved through the Revolution began crumbling, as citizens and states grew tired of the extraordinary effort that acting in concert as a nation required.  Returning home, Washington confronted his own near-bankrupt condition. He faced the same uncertain prospects that all Americans faced, after shunning membership in an imperial economy that, for all its faults, had helped power American prosperity.

No wonder that Washington and other leading Revolutionaries put their weight behind the Constitution of the United States, which, in 1789, with the consent of the states then extant, became the supreme law of the land.  In subsequent decades, as the nation grew, western states sought admission to the United States, voluntarily placing their states under subjection to the Constitution.  States like Texas, briefly an independent nation, eagerly sought to become part of the US, its sovereignty pale beside the Constitutional Union’s advantages.

All this matters because aggrieved Americans now justify their anti-federalism by quoting phrases from the Declaration, as if they do not realize that all that they owe to the Constitution, all the benefits and protections that have accrued to them and their states, thanks to this transformative Founding document.  Oddly, people who don’t know the history or limitations of the Declaration misuse the fiery document that Thomas Jefferson wrote as a young revolutionary hungry the very self-government that Americans gained.

The glorious heights this nation and its people have attained since the War for Independence rest entirely on the Constitution.  The individualism and liberty that the Declaration makes so much of would have come to nothing had the United States not subsequently embraced a strong centralized vision–the Constitution, which spells out the federal system of self-government and individual rights we live by now.

It’s disturbing to hear anti-federalists railing against the federal government using phases from the Declaration.  These benighted citizens come across as yahoos.  The Constitution, not the Declaration, supplies the legal basis of government.  It ensures our freedoms, balances our interests, and gives us sufficient power to be self-governing.  The Constitution, not the Declaration, is the font of all present-day rights, court decisions, and laws.

The Declaration of Independence was never intended to pit Americans against one another or to attack the representative self-government that, thanks to the guarantees of the Constitution, is the birthright of all Americans.

Lincoln’s Death Bed

pencil sketch of Lincoln's death bed by Union artist A. R. Waud

On this day in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died of gun violence.  The previous evening, the president had attended the theater, where a Southern-born actor with rebel sympathies slipped into the private box where Lincoln was sitting and fired a bullet into the back of his head.  Stunned witnesses carried the badly injured president out of Ford’s Theater and across the street to a room at Peterson’s boarding house, where he died at 7:22 a.m. the next day.

It was a politically motivated crime, a vengeful coda to the Civil War, which had ended with the South’s surrender at Appomattox just one week before.  Even now, 156 years after Lincoln’s death, the despicable act that deprived this nation of one of its brightest lights casts doubt on whether our republican form of government, which depends on civility and a respect for the popular will, can prevail in the face of a vulgar resort to violence.

Image: from this source.

Lincoln and the Broken Politics of His Time

On this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born.  He was born into an American heyday, when the new United States (having fended off the British in the War of 1812) were mushrooming.  In 1809, the nation consisted of seventeen states, the westernmost being Ohio, along with a vast territory that pioneers were flooding into, appropriating from natives, and organizing.  Lincoln was born to one such pioneer family and grew up in Illinois, which became a state when he was nine.

By the time Lincoln became president, the number of states had doubled.  The nation stretched to the Pacific.  His milieu was morphing as quickly as he was, a reckless proliferation the politicians could barely control.  The gargantuan Lincoln, with his terrible grooming, was a perfect embodiment of this rough hasty time. Continue reading

Green The Journey: New Year’s 2022

The new year 2022 unscrolls.  As we struggle to get clear of the wreckage of 2021, the question is whether Americans have it in them to begin again, to journey into the future with some humility.  Can we leave behind the evil passions that have eroded the order and security of American life and re-envision something more wholesome, more generally beneficial, that’s kinder to nature and humankind?

The pressure to turn conservative is increasing: by which I mean, the pressure to appreciate and preserve what we have and to consolidate public sentiment around goals consonant with our historical strengths.  Partisan sniping, barbarizing technologies, upper-class selfishness, and decades of in-migration have triggered keen disillusionment, anomie, and rage.  Meanwhile, our love affair with globalism has turned sour.  We are croaking from the environmental and monetary costs.

Amid the disappointment and weariness, January invites us to be open, to be curious, to regard the world with fresh eyes.  Paradoxically, the recollection of what Americans have struggled toward as ideal goods can green the journey, can guide our hejira through a broken world.

Image: “The Journey” (1903)
by Elizabeth Shippen Green Elliott,
from this source.

Heavens, The Great Conjunction!

Our first view of the Christmas Star (Dec 19), © 2020 Susan Barsy

After a difficult year, the advent of the Christmas Star was something wondrous to look forward to.  The internet buzzed with how Saturn and Jupiter would align almost perfectly in their orbits, so much so as to appear as one unusually bright star.  This rare occurrence, coinciding with the winter solstice and technically known as “the Great Conjunction,” happens only once every four-hundred years.  The last time the Great Conjunction occurred in the night sky, however, was in 1226.  Earthlings primed to look up into the late December sky in 2020 stood to witness a cosmic and extraordinary rapprochement.  Bob and I (total amateurs when it comes to such things) talked over our astronomical excursion excitedly.

Seeing an astronomical wonder depends on information, good timing, and good luck.  Whereas some articles asserted that the planets would be visible for just forty-five minutes after sunset, from our present quarters in southwest Michigan, the two planets were above the horizon for almost two hours (per this sophisticated “time lapse” sky map for nearby Benton Harbor). The two planets had begun drawing closer to one another for many weeks prior to December 21 and will continue to appear close together in the night sky until early January.  The evening of the 21st was overcast in our area, but on the 20th and 22nd the conjoined planets (above) were easy to spot.

Pink halo above Jupiter (Dec 20), © 2020 Susan Barsy

On the 20th, as the sky grew dark, the two planets grew more distinct.  Jupiter sported a sweet pink halo; that was Saturn.  We found that our best view of the sky was from under some huge evergreen trees near a very powerful streetlight.  Gradually, we lost a clear view of the planets, as they descended at a roughly 45-degree angle toward the horizon.

The two planets (Jupiter and Saturn)

I took this photograph on the 22nd, using a Nikon with a 36x zoom.  This is a more clinical, scientific view.  The planets only appear to be “next” to one another, when they are hundreds of millions of miles away from one other and from us.  Saturn (at right) is roughly twice as far away from Earth as Jupiter is.

This picture from the 22nd, taken with my Sony on a tripod, better captures the thrill of seeing the two planets in the cold twilight sky.  Saturn is now clearly to the right of brilliant Jupiter.  Saturn looks like a pearl with an ermine ring.  Fiddling with this picture in Photoshop doesn’t improve anything.  The astonishing clarity of the planets filled me with awe.

The moons of Jupiter extend in a line to the left. New Buffalo, MI.

This was perhaps the best picture I took, because, to the left of the planets, one can just make out several of Jupiter’s moons.   The 22nd was partly cloudy, and we were lucky that the wispy clouds broke enough up to reveal this dazzling sight.  For a happy hour, we gazed up with our binoculars, our cameras, and our unaided eyes, until the planets disappeared into the trees.

All photos © Susan Barsy 2020