The Theory and Meaning of America, Part 9

Is the Constitution a standalone document?

From the previous installment in our series, The Theory and Meaning of America, we understand Lincoln's view that the rights of secession for the individual states comprising the United States of America were relinquished under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, ratified in 1781. Under that agreement, each state comprising the Union of States, agreed, “the Union Shall be Perpetual.” Accordingly, because all states agreed, and because the AOC also requires that any changes be ratified by every state legislature, we also understand that a right for states to secede cannot be restored under the Constitution unless the conditions under which they were relinquished are satisfied, namely, that all states comprising the union under the Constitution would agree for a state, or states to leave.

Thus, if what Lincoln says is true, the Constitution is not a standalone document. Instead, the Constitution becomes a document which must remain true to certain preexisting conditions laid out in the agreements preceding it. In other words, the meaning of the US Constitution can only be justified in the context of its preceeding agreements. And because while operating under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, the Congress of the United States of America ratified a treaty in the name of the “Most Holy and Undivided Trinity,” that fact places all authority conveyed from the Articles of Confederation, to the Constitution, under the same auspices.

But before taking Lincoln’s word in all this, it seems proper to seek other authoritative opinions on the matter, perhaps the opinion of an individual whose knowledge springs from firsthand involvement of America’s founding, and whose reputation is impeccable. One such individual would be George Washington, universally admired as the father of our country.

Bidding farewell to the nation he struggled to found, after serving eight years as the first president under the United States Constitution, George Washington stated plainly the meaning of the United States of America. In Washington’s Farewell Address, the individual who understood like few others all that the American Revolution represented, a man who, knowing the meaning of the revolution, also signed the Constitution, offers us the following appraisal today:

“It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature.”

Thus, according to George Washington, as he was leaving office after two terms as the first president under the Constitution, America is an “experiment” designed to test whether Providence has connected the “permanent felicity” of a nation with its “virtue.” By his own words, Washington certifies that America is designed as an experiment to determine whether a virtuous nation, in God's eyes, would elicit the protection by the divine Providence. Washington informs us today that the experiment to which he refers is underway; is not concluded by any measure, and that the "experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature."

But because the experimental nature of America is not referenced in the Constitution, we can only surmise that the experiment is documented elsewhere, in the preceding agreements. If so, we can also conclude that America’s law of the land is more than just what is written in the Constitution.

Invoking the divine Providence, Washington directly references the Declaration of Independence. In future installments in this series, we will fully examine the Declaration, and explore its layers of meaning. But for our purposes now, it is sufficient to know that after serving two terms under the Constitution, expressing farewell to the nation he founded, George Washington documented his understanding of the experimental nature of America’s founding. Washington states clearly his personal belief that God's role in America’s founding was not simply to authorize America going forward and then sit back and watch. Washington projects God's active role in America’s founding, which is one consistent with the role God played leading the nation of Israel out of Egypt, the same God Who provided protection for His people crossing the Red Sea, but also Whose protection is promised only as long as the people obey His laws and respect His authority. Accordingly, Washington offers for us to consider the proposition that a nation obeying the laws of God, would thereby become a nation "guided by an exalted justice and benevolence."

And so, without even considering the profound meaning behind this excerpt of Washington's Farewell Address, as is the case in Lincoln's Special Address to Congress of July 4, 1861, it is unavoidable that both of these men understood that the US Constitution is not simply a standalone document. The Constitution, therefore, cannot be understood outside of its context. Both of these men express that the Supreme Law of the Land for the United States of America consists of several documents, the Declaration of Independence, which among other principles invokes the precept of the divine Providence, the Articles of Confederation which established the first formal government and made the union perpetual, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which confirmed the nature of the authority under which America is founded, and the Constitution itself, a document which relies on the same authority conveyed through its predecessors.

In our next installment in the series, The Theory and Meaning of America, we will travel from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the principles of "exalted justice and benevolence" to the principles of men whose intentions were to bastardize the meaning of America’s founding, change its meaning, and establish new meanings for their own transient purposes. But we will also discover that truth cannot be hidden; that placing a veil of falsehood over truth only more convincingly contrasts it against all else, and that the truths established under the Declaration of Independence unavoidably serve as authority for our Constitution today. In our next installment, we will consider the Dred Scott Decision and how that affront to justice and benevolence, shines the light of truth on the Constitution today.