Circa1865

The most prescient of the Founders, Patrick Henry discerned the predictable result of ratifying a Constitution which he viewed as nothing more than consolidating the States into one centralized government. He challenged the Federalists of his day: “let me appeal to the candor of the committee, if the want of money be not the source of all our misfortunes.” He maintained that the new government was a consolidated one, and that its advocates sought “splendor” – not liberty.

Bernhard Thuersam, Circa1865

Constitution Unable to Control Man’s Nature

“Man,” Patrick Henry warned, “is a fallen creature, a fallible being, and cannot be depended upon without self-love.” Certainly, a large measure of Henry’s ideas of the type of government which would serve the true function of government, the preservations of liberty, were based upon this idea of the nature of the human species. Indeed, the best government would be one which would be one which made the most effective provisions against this.

One of the primary modes in which this “self-love” manifested itself was in a desire for power because “human nature never will part from power.” The human temptation was present in all men . . . Henry deduced, for “the characteristic of the good or great Man is not that he has been exempted from the evils of life, but that he surmounted them.”

The annals of history pointed this out, for “can the annals of mankind exhibit one single example, where rulers overcharged with power willingly let go the oppressed, though solicited and requested most earnestly?” In fact, “a willing relinquishment of power is one of those things which human nature never was, nor will ever be capable of.”

What was there about this new government which did not provide for this innate weakness of man? Why had the men at the Constitutional Convention created a new government? Was it because the government of the Articles of Confederation was so weak that they were faced with the alternatives of drastic action or anarchy? Patrick Henry did not think so.

The Confederation had won the war; it had saved the West. He protested that history was replete with examples, “instances of people losing their liberties by their own carelessness and the ambition of a few.” Was this not the real reason for the proposed change in government?

Also disturbing to Henry’s mind was the fact that in many States which had ratified the new Constitution, the masses had not been awarded the opportunity to vote on the election of new delegates to the ratification conventions. He protested, “. . . only 10,000 were represented in Pennsylvania although 70,000 had a right to be represented. Is this not a serious thing?”

If the people did not want a change in their government, why then did the Philadelphia Convention write the new Constitution?”

(The Christian Philosophy of Patrick Henry, James M. Wells, Carris J. Kocher, editor, Bill of Rights Bicentennial Committee, 2004 (original 1960), pp. 58-59)

“The Old Guard” was published from 1863 to 1867 by C. Chauncey Burr in New York, though not pro-Union.  Articles that appeared during the war years were very critical of Lincoln and his administration, and blamed them either directly of indirectly, for the mass casualties on both sides of the fighting.

Bernhard Thuersam, Circ1865

 
Daniel Webster, Prophet

“When the “great Expounder of the Constitution” read the speech of Mr. [William H.] Seward, which announced “the irrepressible conflict,” he exclaimed:

“If these infernal fanatics and abolitionists ever get power in their hands, they will override the Constitution, set Supreme Court at defiance, change and make laws to suit themselves, lay violent hands on those that differ with them in their opinion, or dare question their infallibility; and finally, bankrupt the country and deluge it with blood.”

We beg, with due respect, to call Mr. Lincoln’s attention to these words of terrible prophecy uttered by the immortal Daniel Webster. The flowers have blossomed over the grave of the great statesman but a few summers before his awful words are more than fulfilled. Will Mr. Lincoln deny that abolitionism has already wrought the work of destruction and death then foretold?”

(The Old Guard, September 1863 issue, C. Chauncey Burr & Co. New York.)

Patrick Henry was outspoken in his resistance to the adoption of the Constitution, pleading with the delegates to “consider what you are about to do before you part with [the articles of Confederation]”  He stated that history was replete with “instances of people losing their liberties by their own carelessness and the ambition of a few.”

Bernhard Thuersam, Circa1865

Government Replete With Insupportable Evils

“The [proposed United States] Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints toward monarchy, and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American?

Your president may easily become king. Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed to what may be a small minority; and a very small minority may continue for ever interchangeably this government, altho horribly defective. Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies.

It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, from the Eastern to the Western Hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad?

Show me the age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.

If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute? The army is in his hands, and if he be a man of address, it will be attached to him, and it will be the subject of long meditation with him to seize the first auspicious moment to accomplish his design, and, sir, will the American spirit solely relieve you when this happens?

I would rather infinitely – and I am sure most of this Convention are of the same opinion — have a king, lords, and commons, than a government so replete with such insupportable evils. If we make a king we may prescribe the rules by which he shall rule his people, and interpose such checks as shall prevent him from infringing them; but the president, in the field, at the head of his army, can prescribe the terms on which he shall reign master, so far that it will puzzle any American ever to get his neck from under the galling yoke.

But, sir, where is the existing force to punish him? Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposition? Away with your president! We shall have a king: the army will salute him monarch; your militia will leave you, and assist in making him king, and fight against you: and what have you to oppose this force? What will become of your rights? Will not absolute despotism prevail?

(Patrick Henry, “Give Me Liberty of Give Me Death” speech, March 23, 1775, before the Second Revolutionary Convention of Virginia; The World’s Famous Orations, William Jennings Bryan, editor, Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1906, pp. 74-76)