Constitutional Truth

Constitutional Truth The United States Constitution impacted the development of American freedom in a number of different ways. It established the basic format for that freedom which has only been altered in the ensuing centuries by amendments and landmark Supreme Court rulings. In doing so, the Constitution provided the scope of the limited focus of American freedom which was far from freedom for all regardless of gender, race, and economic status.

In fact, one can successfully argue that prior to its numerous amendments and to the Supreme Court cases that affected various interpretations of the Constitution, this document impacted American freedom by establishing the boundaries of the federal government and by establishing the superiority of economically viable Caucasian males. The aforementioned thesis is probably best supported by a brief examination of the document that preceded the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation. This document had a number of weak points that were directly addressed by the drafting of the Constitution.

Specifically, the latter document was created to establish a strong central, federal government which could help to preserve the freedom of the country and of the privileged Caucasian males who were considered its citizens worth preserving. The Articles of Confederation required a unanimous consensus of the states to do virtually anything. In the event that the country was attacked by a foreign nation, for instance, each state had to agree on the terms of raising a militia and how best to defend the freedom of its citizens.

From an economic perspective, each state had its own currency which made it difficult to centralize production and to form a solid economic basis for the country. The drafting of the Constitution helped to address virtually all of these issues that pertained to states' rights which were so important to the Articles of Confederation. In doing so, it helped to preserve the freedom of Americans by providing a strong stabilizing force to oppose any potential attackers in the rest of the world, both physically and economically.

The American freedom developed by the Constitution was somewhat dubious in that this document helped establish the fact that some people were more free than others. For instance, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights made it clear that whatever lofty ideals were engraved within them regarding liberty and justice did not pertain to Africans and African-Americans who were enslaved.

In fact, the Constitution was specifically worded so as to permit the slave trade to continue 2.The former document specifically states that slaves factored into the new nation as 3/5 of a human being -- meaning that they were obviously barred from the rights of freedom, fair trial, and other privileges bestowed upon those who were considered men. Still, this fact actually substantially affected some Caucasian males who were property owners, and who would utilize this point to oppose the Constitution.

These men were opposed to the Constitution and the freedom it afforded because they did not want states that had a substantial slave population to have a greater amount of representation in the House of Representatives (which was based on population). Additionally, these men were concerned about issues of taxation, which were partly based on population and the fact that those with slaves might be subject to greater amounts of taxes because of the way that slaves were configured in the Constitution.

Other Caucasian males with property were opposed to the Constitution because they believed that it could infringe upon their own personal freedom. These men largely believed that if they were regarded as the rightful owners of their property that they could do what they pleased there -- a notion which the Constitution effectively overrode.

It is also important to realize that the Constitution afforded the most rights and protection to those who were property owners, a fact which significantly impacted the sort of freedom afforded to Native Americans, women, slaves, and even poor Caucasian males who could not afford property. These different groups were effectively unrepresented by the Constitution, which was largely written without their benefit. Thomas Jefferson recommended forcibly removing Native Americans from their land, which indicates he did not think of them as citizens 3.

As such, the sort of freedom developed by this document largely did not pertain individual members of these different categories of people. Caucasian women probably were afforded the most protection through the Constitution, because it at least acknowledged that they were citizens. However, they endured a second-class citizenship at best in which they could not vote (and would not get the right to do until over a century later), were rarely property owners, and were generally considered the properties of their husbands.

The slave issue and the way it was treated in the Constitution for the purposes of taxation and representation meant that these individuals were not even considered whole human beings, let alone citizens. Again, these people were merely considered the property of their slave owners. And after Native Americans witnessed these Caucasians unlawfully repossess their land and commit acts of war against them, they were not even considered in the Constitution and certainly had no degree of citizenship according to its articles. This fact was.