The Preamble of the Constitution is one of the most important phrases of America’s founding. I remember as a kid in junior high, my mom made me memorize the preamble.
“What for????” I whined! I deeply admired and loved my country and its founders, but I sure as heck didn’t want to memorize their very wordy literature!
What Does the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution Say?
The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution gives the who, what, and why of the Constitution and says the following:
“We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Whew! That’s a lot of words in one sentence! So let’s break it down.
The Who of the Preamble: “We The People Of The United States”
The Preamble of the Constitution united the individual states of the original 13 states. This meant that “the Supreme Law of the Land would be ratified in the name of ‘We the People’ rather than ‘We the States’.”
In other words, the Preamble effectively defines who is adopting the Constitution: the people of America.
The Why of the Preamble of the Constitution
The Preamble of the Constitution also serves as the “why” of the Constitution. America’s new form of government is being enacted. The Preamble has also been called the “‘Enacting Clause’ of the Constitution, in that it declares the fact of adoption of the Constitution (once sufficient states had ratified it): ‘We the People of the United States…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America’” (Constitution Center).
READ MORE! UNDERSTANDING NATURAL RIGHTS IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
The What of the Preamble of the Constitution
And finally, the Preamble defines what is being adopted: the Constitution. The Constitution would be the text that is the law of the land. “Written constitutionalism was a distinctively American innovation, and one that the framing generation considered the new nation’s greatest contribution to the science of government” (Constitution Center).
Joseph Story in Commentaries writes, “Its [the Preamble’s] true office is to expound the nature and extent and application of the powers actually conferred by the Constitution, and not substantively to create them.”
In Order To Form A More Perfect Union, Establish Justice…
The Founding Fathers had a goal of uniting the separate states into one country with justice. The Constitutional Convention was not a treaty of the states… it was a unification of all the states to become one country.
When the Founding Fathers wrote that they wanted “to form a more perfect union,” they did not mean perfect as in flawless. They mean perfect as in “a better and stronger [union] (one that is more perfected or brought to completion) than had pre-existed the Constitution.”
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BILL OF RIGHTS: GEORGE MASON – THE FATHER OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS
The Preamble Establishes Justice And Domestic Tranquility
By establishing justice and domestic Tranquility, the government would serve the people, not the other way around. This was unheard of. In all the other countries, the people served the government. The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution set the tone for this anomaly.
Governor Edmund Randolph stated, “The government is for the people; and the misfortune was, that the people had no agency in the government before… If the government is to be binding on the people, are not the people the proper persons to examine its merits or defects?”
This section of the Constitution was also in response to small uprisings, such as Shayes Rebellion in Massachusetts, and Article 1, Section 8 give Congress control over militias.
Provide For The Common Defense
This was a tense subject among the Founding Fathers. Many felt that if Congress had control over the military, it would become a police-state (much like Soviet Russia and Mao’s China).
Alexander Hamilton wrote extensively about this subject in Federalist Paper 25. “If […] it should be resolved to extend the prohibition to the raising of armies in time of peace, the United States would then exhibit the most extraordinary spectacle which the world has yet seen- that of a nation incapacitated by its Constitution to prepare for defense before it was actually invaded.” The Preamble laid the groundwork for a military to be formed for America’s “common defense”.
Indeed, it was a harsh divide between early Americans, and Thomas Jefferson was the first to finally form a navy big enough to defeat the Pirates.
…Promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
Alexander Hamilton spoke frequently about what the general welfare was, and he was “convinced that a federally financed system of what would soon be called internal improvements-building roads, dredging rivers, digging canals-was in the national interest. But, since each project would be of immediate advantage only to the area where it was located, none could properly be regarded as being in the general welfare.” This led Hamilton to believe that a constitutional amendment would have to occur “if internal improvements were to be undertaken” (Heritage Foundation).
The welfare of the country also demonstrates the bottom-up form of government, rather than the top-down form of government so common before the U.S. Constitution (Farris, Michael, Constitutional Literacy). The people controlled the government, which meant the government obeyed whatever the people needed, thus promoting the general Welfare.
The Preamble of the Constitution also demonstrated the ability for the people (again, a bottom-up form of government) to secure the Blessings of Liberty to themselves and their Posterity. This means the people could easily enact laws that benefit their children.
But the wording goes even further so as to provide that “the rule of law is crucial to curbing the excesses of liberty-a strengthening of liberty’s ‘blessings’-and therefore central in fostering moral virtue” (Heritage Foundation).
The Constitution is moral.
LEARN MORE! IS AMERICA A REPUBLIC OR DEMOCRACY?
Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America
That wraps it up! The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution establishes that the states ratifying it completely agree that the Constitution is the Law of the land. The states voted it in allowing future generations of America to enjoy the benefits of one of the most genius documents ever written into law. If you don’t understand the Preamble of the Constitution, it is hard to understand the Constitution itself.