Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Brion McClanahan Th

The social science division. He received his masters and phd in history from the university of south carolina. Around, he is an avid fan. He has been a member of the faculty since 2005. He previously taught history at Jefferson Davis Community College. Some do not associate the Community College with scholarly production of writing and research. He proves the addition to the academic discussion of history and events is alive and well in Community College. This is his third book to be published. He has appeared on syndicated programs in support of those works. He has published Opinion Pieces on current events. While doing all that, he and his wife have found time to raise a family. They have a son and three daughters. I know they are very busy. We need to get on with the reason we are here tonight. I am pleased to introduce the author of the Founding Fathers guide to the contribution constitution, brion mcclanahan. [applause] brion how are you doing . Great. Thank you for coming, i appreciate it. It is great to see my students and friends from the community and faculty. Your support is welcome. I would also like to thank you for letting me do this year and also dr. Cannon, kelly williams, karen kelly, all the people that helps me put together helps me put together. And also cspan is your recording the event. I would be remiss if i didnt think my family, who cannot be here. They are the backbone in all of this. Start, i would like to tell each one of my students that this book is dedicated to you. It is dedicated to my children, the reason being every semester here i teach the constitution. As you are aware, i asked question, how many have ever read the constitution . Usually one hand goes up, maybe two, sometimes none. Factconfronted with the that i go into a blank slate, it is unfortunate. Governeditution is the document for the United States. We hear about the constitution and what it means, but there isnt much information out there in the American Public about it. That is a relatively recent phenomenon. People used to talk about the constitution a lot, whether in congress when they debated a bill in question, whether it was in the public through discourse commentaries, this is this was a big topic. Not so much anymore. Hear thees, you constitution is too old, archaic. It wasnt written in old english, it is not shakespearean. There are no thousand and please in it. Yous easy to understand if read it, but most dont take the time, i think because they are scared. They dont know what it means. They say here is article one, . Rticle two, what do they mean my job in writing this was to give people a readable story of the constitution. I went through applause clause by clause so students, whether at california or, maine, hawaii, across the country, would know what it meant to read the constitution and what the founding generation says this meant. I was also motivated to write the book because of the charge in the constitution itself. The founding generation left this constitution to their posterity. That is often a word we dont use. Trust to knowed what that constitution means, to understand it. To digest it. In doing this, i hoped the American People would do that if they were students of the constitution. Often times you hear different ideas. Some will say the constitution is an elastic document, you can read into it. It has words, you can read these words. We have to go beyond that. That is what this Supreme Court judge or this constitution a scholar says it means. Those that say the constitution is limiting. It is what it says, you cant go beyond that. We should interpret the constitution literally. There is this big debate. People get confused, which one is it . Is it loosely interpreted, is it elastic, or is it a limiting document . I actually wanted to cut through all of that. I didnt care what modern scholars said about the constitution. I didnt care what the Supreme Court said. I cared what the Founding Fathers said about the constitution. My journey began there. Book, conceptualized this most of you dont know that publishing process, you take an idea and are told yes or no. If you are told yes, you go from there. When i pitched the idea, i was going to focus on the component of the constitution. I was going to focus on what they thought. The publisher came back and said that wouldnt be good. It might turn out to be an anticonstitution book. I said how can we work with this . We brainstormed and decided to write a book on the constitution based on what the founding generation said about the constitution. Both for and against the constitution. I have read a lot of material about this. As i started digging through the research, i realized i have only scratched the surface. Much of what i knew was going to be change, or at least in some ways, it was going to be more involved. As i got the material, i said this is deeper than i thought. What i had often thought about the constitution is there, but there is more to it. It is more complex than what i had said about it in my first book. When you are looking at this document, it is the Founding Fathers guide to the constitution. Not just the Founding Fathers you are familiar with, it is all of the founding generations. It is a generational book for the american generation. Not just three or four people and what they said. I looked at what everybody said about it that i can put my hands on. This had to be sold to people. The Founding Fathers are important because they wrote it. I thought what about what a better source than going to the people who wrote it and had to present this to 13 sometimes tile ratifying convictions conventions and tell people this is what it means . You might be saying the constitution will do this, but be reassured, this is what it means. Thats the constitution we should be looking at, that is their constitution. That process is very important. The ratification process, the constitution meant nothing until the state decided to ratify it. That is the overall subject of the book. Im going to read you a quote from a founding father of North Carolina. I will refer back to it quite a bit. Often times, you get this statement, the Founding Fathers were a combative root of people group of people that didnt agree on anything. Who are you talking about . We know the big names, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, john jay, they are the authors of the federalist papers. Thatssays against formed the constitution. Most people read it and think they understand it. Look at the federalist papers and say that it. It is deeper than that. It goes much deeper. I would argue in the book that the federalist papers are not as important as you think. ,hey were written in new york and they didnt have much of an impact in new york itself. The state only ratified the constitution by three votes. It was gone over and over in the philadelphia connection convention and modified by important people. Some of these people you probably never heard of before like John Dickinson of delaware. Called a guy that was the 10 men of the resolution. Revolution. He was one of the most apportionment of the founding generation. When he went to the Philadelphia Convention, he looked at this constitution and said we are not having that. That is not going to work in these United States. You have someone like Roger Sherman, a man that thomas said aon once said never stupid thing in his life. This was also his constitution because he was a conservative, moderating influence. When he got to the Philadelphia Convention and saw James Madison, he said we are not having that. The people of connecticut will never agree to this. Or John Rutledge of south carolina. Another very important founding father, he would serve on the Supreme Court. He helped win the american war for independence from the saddle as governor. He said this constitution that you have written is not going to work in south carolina. We need to modify this thing. That is what happens in philadelphia. One historian calls it the miracle in philadelphia. No one was sure if this was going to get out of philadelphia. There were so many different ideas floating around that it appeared the constitution was going to die before the middle of the summer of 1787. The story you often hear about the constitution is it is the large states against the small states. Madison is from a very large state. That is not the real issue. The real issue was what type of government were we going to have . A National Government, or a federal government . Today, we have the federal government. The founding generation didnt call it that. Like dickinson, sherman, and rutledge said we dont want a National Government, we want a federal government. James madison wanted it wanted a National Government. Eight federal government only had general purposes in mind. Everything else was left to the states. Thats what the majority of the founding generation argued for. Not a National Government which put all powered authority. When you Start Talking about general versus federal and National Versus general, these are important terms. You still hear the term the United States is a nation today, it is still thrown around. The founding generation would face the general government for general purposes. When the constitution came out of philadelphia in september of 1787, no one was even sure it would get ratified. They have written it, talked about it, sweated over and poured their hearts out into it. No one was sure if this would make it out of nine states, which is what they required to ratify it. Be sold, that sales job is what i talk about more than anything else. The Philadelphia Convention, because sometimes you cant understand the constitution without understanding what they said it meant in philadelphia. Often times, you cant understand the constitution and what it meant all throughout the United States. This isdison agreed what he said. Constitution was brought to life and only found its meaning because of the state conventions which gave it all the validity and authority it possesses. Int we presented philadelphia means nothing. What the state ratifying convention said it meant means everything. We dont often hear about these things. Perhaps the most famous Supreme Court justice ever, John Marshall, never onetime referenced the state ratifying conventions in any decisions. They earlier never referenced. Those conventions is where everything was discussed and hammered out. These states, many wavering in support, were sold the constitution on the basis of what the constitution meant at the time. Thats what i said i was going to write a book based on what they said it meant. I bring in those proponents. Proponents and opponents of the document. You often hear there are two groups, the federalists and the antifederalists. Those terms are wrong. Eldridge gerry of massachusetts said it best. They werent federalist and antifederalists, they were rats and antirats. Have these federalists, what you are talking about are nationalists. They believe in a strong, central authority. They thought more power should be in the central government. Federalists, the often called the antifederalists. They believed in a federal government were states have much of the authority. This is today, how much authority is it going to have and how much are the State Governments going to have that is what we get out of this process. That is the main point in the book, to go through these opinions. Shocked me. I expected to write a book and say there are a lot of different , so you have to bring this out yourself and which one was thet what i found opponents of the constitution who said the government was z, it waso x y and wrong. They are arguing on the same positions in the same way. The consensus was there, there was an interpretation. What you have essentially is a general government for general concerns. Thats it. I will talk about how that worked and why they thought it was important. When we get to the discussion of the bill of rights. Be as not going to National Government and was not going to abolish the states, which some feared. As i went through these declarations and speeches, and pamphlets, all of these things, a multitude of volumes. The general consensus began to appear. I put as much of that as i can in the book. I wanted people to see that. The other thing i have often heard is i use a lot of quotations. Sometimes that can make it dry. I didnt want to be i didnt wanted to be brion mcclanahans guide to the constitution, i wanted to be the Founding Fathers guide to the constitution. They were better at saint what they meant than i am. At saying what they meant than i am. The quotes were important to me. I wanted to put as many as i could. There are two dependencies in the book that are nothing but quotations, stuff i thought was great, but i couldnt put in the book because i had. I think those sections are the most fun, because you can read what they said. Some of it is meaty, you just want to sit there and read for hours. What we have is a written constitution for the United States of america. Not of,is important, for. I want to read you a quote. Johnson said by samuel of North Carolina. He said this in the first North Carolina ratifying convention. North carolina essentially refused to ratify the document. They had to have two ratifying conventions. He said a parallel has been drawn between the British Parliament and congress. The powers of congress are also prescribed, defined, and clearly laid down so far they may go, but no farther. What are the powers of the British Parliament . They have no written constitution in britain. The power of parliament is unbounded. That is an important distinction to make. We have a written constitution in the United States, that was done for a reason. The founding generation wanted this to be permanent. Not that it couldnt be changed, they thought it could be changed. What they didnt want happening, this is how it was sold, they didnt want people going in and changing it without amending it. Through judicial opinions, or legislative decisions, bills, executive orders, whatever we do now. They didnt want it changed in that way. You start looking at how the founding generations sold this, it becomes clear. I often have debates about this. You say the constitution says what it means and means what it says, that is true. They intended it to be specific. That is how they sold it. People said it wouldnt be interpreted that way, but that is neither here nor there. It was sold in 1877 that it would be interpreted, not the other way around. Lets start with a preamble. The most famous 52 words in the constitution. We the people of the United States. There are a lot of misconceptions about it. These are things i am going to talk about that may surprise people or you may not know. One thing is it says the be setution is going to down for prosperity posterity. They intended it to be longlasting. S is the longest electing lasting written constitution in the world today. I thought through the amendment process it could be that way. Otherwise, you have a new constitution. They intended it to last for a long time. There are members of the founding generation that said that. What most people dont know about the preamble is the original preamble, probably nobody has ever read it. The constitution was first presented in philadelphia, this is what it said. Ofthe people of the states new hampshire, massachusetts, rhode island, connecticut, new york, and new jersey, pennsylvania, delaware, North Carolina, south carolina, and georgia. Established the following constitution for the government of ourselves and our posterity. That was the original preamble. You might wonder why they changed it. Its very simple. The man in charge of changing the preamble was gouverneur morris. He was thinking along the same lines as James Madison. They were afraid of some things. Didntone, rhode island send a delegation to the convention. How could they list in the preamble when they are not there . Number two, would all 13 states ratify it . If they didnt, and he listed them, that could cause problems. The constitution was only binding on the states that ratified it. If not everyone ratified it, it wouldnt be binding on them. It was a union of states, not people, which was pointed out over and over again. Times, we read into this preamble and think this is what the constitution means. Thats what it says, thats what the constitution is. Let me tell you what James Madison said. This is something most people never heard before. This is a quote from James Madison. The general terms or phrases used in the introductory propositions, and now a source of so much constructive ingenuity, were never meant to be inserted in their loose form in the text of the constitution. Like resolutions preliminary to legal enactments, it was understood by all that they were to be reduced by pro