Princeton University recently held an event titled “Citizenship and Its Discontents in Our Evolving Democratic Republic.” Throughout the 90-minute panel, speakers took turns lambasting our Constitution as “a tool of geopolitical gaslighting” that “furthers a racial crisis and a democratic crisis.”
Given the revisionist historical narratives that have grown in popularity over the years, it is understandable why the speakers on this panel have come to believe and promote these views. That said, a close study of the primary source documents that define America’s founding reveals this historical account is far from accurate. The text and principles of the Constitution show a commitment to equality and liberty that has come to define our nation.
As abolitionists like Frederick Douglass pointed out, the original Constitution did not mention slavery or classify people by race or ethnicity, and that was intentional. The final, ratified copy of the Declaration of Independence, the principles of which animate the Constitution, did not mince words when it declared that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
At the Constitutional Convention a decade later, James Madison stated unequivocally that it would be “wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.” And ultimately, it did not.
Of course, America’s history is not as colorblind as the Constitution. Public and private policies have caused many racial inequalities. But those problems highlight the flaws of human beings, not the Constitution.
While the Founders knew that there was not yet enough political will to outlaw slavery across the nation when the Constitution was adopted, they were hopeful that the country would head in that direction, as it had started to do so as early as the 1780s, when a number of states began to outlaw or restrict slavery. So they ensured the text of the Declaration and Constitution kept open the possibility of racial justice. As Abraham Lincoln later put it, “in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people,” Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration, “had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.”
Yes, there have been terrible setbacks in the push for equality, but we have made progress. Spurred on by the principles of the founding, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, followed by the 14th Amendment, which mandated equal protection of the laws for all. We are now blessed to live in a country committed to the principle that “all men are created equal” and should be treated equally, just as the Constitution stipulates.
America’s checkered past has been far from perfect, as is every other nation’s, and America’s schools should ensure their students understand and come to terms with both the good and the bad. However, the Constitution needs to be understood as part of the solution, not the problem.
To ensure that America’s youth learn the truth, the whole truth, about their nation and the principles that define who we are, many states across the country are now directing their schools to teach from primary-source documents such as the Declaration and Constitution, as well as the speeches and writings of great Americans like Douglass and Lincoln.
This teaching approach prevents bias and perspective-focused narratives from seeping into the classroom, and it encourages students to understand history directly from the words of those who wrote it, not from textbook authors and others who are paid to interpret and opine on it. That’s the kind of education the next generation of Americans deserves.
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Dr. Jeffrey Sikkenga is the executive director of the Ashbrook Center, an independent academic center that seeks to educate Americans on the history and founding principles of our country through the direct study of primary source documents.
