There are moments when my heart swells in gratitude for this wonderful country, and the beautiful principles on which it was built. These moments don't occur when I watch the news or hear of current government affairs (though while many of these are troubling, a great deal more are testament to the wonderful nation in which we live). No, these moments occur when I study our heritage - the lives that built this nation from the foundation up. Those select few and remarkable gentlemen who coined phrases such as "We the People", "That all men are created equal", and "In God We Trust". I can't help but marvel at the birth of such a remarkable generation - the wisdom in these men; the virtue and the courage they each held.
It's probably just because I've been writing essays for my American Heritage class all week, but I'm in a huge 'History' geeker mood. The following two excerpts (as recorded in my textbook) are two moments that I have recently read about, and cannot get out of my mind. Two moments I would have loved to see.
___________
(after the Great Compromise)
"James Madison...was beyond consolation. When the small states had lost early on, they threatened to abandon the Convention. Madison made no such threat now. He returned to his lodgings and perhaps to his books. Later that evening, at the Lion cafe, he still wasn't smiling, but he was grudgingly ready to propose a toast. This truly was a new kind of government, he allowed, one for which there was absolutely no precedent in history. It was on the one hand a government of the sovereign people of America, and on the other hand a government of the sovereign states. "Gentlemen," he said, "to the United States of America."
___________
"Benjamin Franklin...had prepared a little speech of his own, to be read on the following Monday by James Wilson. This was the last day of the Convention, and most of it was to be ceremonial. Franklin began with reference to that pall of gloom which had accompanied Saturday's defections - the fear that the Constitution had compromised too much. "Mr. President," he began:
I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve. But I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgement, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error...But that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said, "I don't know how it happens, Sister, but I meet with nobody but myself, that's always in the right."
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such...I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better and because I am not sure that it is not the best.
It was an astute address, worthy of the master at his best. Franklin was equally fluent off the cuff. In the more relaxed informality of the signing, he came out with one of his vintage similes. "Whilst the last members were signing it," Madison penned in his now book-length notes:
Doctr. Franklin looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to ta few members near him, that painter had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.
The sentiment was light and charming. All the same, the old man wept when he signed the Constitution."
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