U.S. Constitution: Basis of power for new aristocracy

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6 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1987 "We the people, to form a equity, and order..."

So begins the Iroquois Treaty of 1520, written by American Indians a century before Europeans began their settlement of New England. More than 250 years later, this country's "Founding Fathers" borrowed the words of the Iroquois for the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

But American Indians (who numbered over a million people) were not consulted on their wishes for the new nation. Nor were Black slaves (one-fifth of the nonIndian population) invited to take part in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Nor were any small farmers, mechanics, or laborers present among the delegates.

Most of the well-to-do merchants, bankers, planters, and merchants in the convention's secret sessions thought democracy "the government of the worst." Roger Sherman, a delegate from Connecticut, said, "The people should have as little as may be with the government."

Yet the Constitution claimed to speak for "the people." Its preamble promised to secure for them "the blessings of liberty."

True, the Constitution established a popularly elected House of Representatives and a system of appellate courts. It also guaranteed important democratic rights. But these concessions to the common people (including the Bill of Rights) were included primarily to ensure that the Constitution would be ratified.

At the same time, the Constitution maintained undemocratic voting restrictions and set up a labyrinth of governmental "checks and balances" that worked to dissipate the will of the people. The office of president, for example, was granted powers equivalent to those of a monarch, providing an effective counterbalance to Congress.

Divided interests

Nevertheless, the drafting of the Constitution was a revolutionary act. An independent republic, highly unified, was established at a time when Europe was still ruled by outright feudal monarchies.

America was transformed within a century from a colony based on agriculture and forestry into the world's first-ranked industrial power. The Constitution established the political foundations—on behalf of a new emerging capitalist class-that made this expansion possible.

In the early years of the republic, however, the mercantile capitalists, centered in the Northern cities, shared power with the slaveholding planters of the South. Their divided interests soon caused a wing of the planters to pull away from their former allies. This was the opening salvo of a struggle for power that would only be decided decades later in the Civil War.

To all appearances, the conflict began rather suddenly—if not entirely unexpectedly. After all, the gentry both North and South were linked by family ties as well as by joint investments in land and other commercial ventures. And the slave trade had brought riches to many a Yankee merchant or sea captain.

Disputes at the Constitutional Convention had been resolved in "gentlemanly" fashion. As Rufus King of Massachusetts declared, slavery was "the price" to be paid Photo above: The First Bank of the United States in Philadelphia established by Alexander Hamilton in 1791. Photo circa 1844.

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