The earliest critics of the U.S. Constitution struggled against aspects of a document with many avoidable flaws, mistakes that haunt us to the present day. Go back to that hot room in the summer of 1787. How many of us would endorse the Electoral College? The three-fifths clause? The fugitive slave clause? The continuation of the African slave trade for 20 years? An Executive elected with no term limits? A ban on paper money? Vast Presidential pardon powers? An ineffective and nearly impossible to complete impeachment process?
In this era of highly charged debates over how we study American history, I suggest we mark Constitution Day not by bowing at the feet of Madison, Hamilton, and Washington, but by remembering those who lost. Several skeptical delegates left Philadelphia earlier than the September 17, 1787 signing day. One was Luther Martin of Maryland.
Martin was a difficult man. Imagine a cross between Ralph Nader, George Wallace, and Hunter Thompson. Catherine Drinker Bowen labeled him the “wild man of the convention.” We created the four-part documentary series, Confounding Father: A Contrarian View of the U.S. Constitution because this fascinating man was, in the words of eminent revolutionary era historian Gordon Wood, “full of predictions and most of them came true...” We would all have been better served if Martin and other gadflies like Yates and Lansing of New York had stayed until the end of the convention, as much was decided without them.
According to Bill Kauffman, author of Founding Father, Drunken Prophet: the Life of Luther Martin, this statement was a plea to the framers of the U.S. Constitution for a modest American confederation. Luther Martin thought the leading framers lusted to create an empire that would compete with European powers. Strange as it may seem from the 21st century, he and many opponents of the Philadelphia convention did not want that. For Luther Martin, empires inevitably led to unhappiness and ruin. Might we have been more like Canada or Switzerland?
One of Martin's prescient predictions was that Washington DC would become isolated and removed from the people because the House was too small and members would soon neglect their constituents. Many have indeed come to feel that what happens “inside the beltway” is removed from their lives and concerns. In our documentary, historian Woody Holton calls this an “invisible wall.”