The United States Constitution: Annotated with The Federalist Papers in Modern English

Now, I was going to read this week’s book, The United States Constitution: Annotated with The Federalist Papers in Modern English edited by Mary E. Webster last week, due to Constitution Day was last Sunday, September 17. However, my kitchen still looks like this.

Never ending kitchen remodel from hell.

So, my reading has slowed WAY down while I continue to battle the remodeling gods. Also, why we’re not doing the president book this month, I wanted to finish The US Constitution, was just struggling to find time to do it.

Now, an absolutely terrifying number of people have never actually read the Constitution in full, which is alarming because unlike the massive, thousand-page omnibus bills stuffed with pork that our current congress critters like to produce, the US Constitution is only 17 pages long. Hell, that’s in pamphlet form. I’ve literally copied and pasted the text of the US Constitution from https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/ and it’s only 11 pages as a word document. I’ve written blog posts longer than that. Of course, it’s entirely possible no one’s read those blog posts either, so I shouldn’t be surprised that so few Americans know what’s in the Constitution, beyond possibly naming a few amendments.

In addition to maybe being only able to name a few amendments, some people argue that, as The Constitution was written 236 years ago, we cannot possibly understand what the intent of the founding fathers was…other than counting the slaves as less than with the infamous 3/5 rule. That one is pretty well known throughout the land thanks to political pundits who deliberately misunderstand it to push their political agendas. I would guess most people can cite the 1st and 2nd Amendments. And MAYBE know the Miranda Warnings from TV are somehow linked to the Constitution.

What Webster did, is first, she painstakingly translated the Federalist Papers…which are inarguably what the founding fathers meant when they ratified the Constitution…. into modern, easy to read, English. And I do feel confident in saying the Federalist Papers are inarguably what the founding fathers meant. Because from September 1787 until June 1788 when the Constitution was ratified, there was a bitter newspaper struggle going on, with the supporters of the Constitution posting what would become the Federalist Papers and the detractors posting the papers from the book two weeks ago, the Anti-Federalist papers. And since the Constitution was ratified, that means the bulk of Americans in the 18th century supported the Founding Fathers interpretation of the Constitution as argued in The Federalist Papers. And since Webster translated those papers into Modern English, we can say that yes…we definitively know what the founding fathers meant with the Constitution.

And then, for the benefit of all, Webster took the seventeen-page Constitution and carefully cross referenced every single line in the Constitution with where that line is referenced in the Federalist Papers. Every…. single…line.

Webster starts with a very important point “As I studied The Federalist Papers I have discovered that memorizing the dates of history’s events is not the goal of studying history. It is the human motivations behind the events that are important for us to understand. Every time we forget history, tyranny grows. Every time we ignore history, our freedoms disappear. Every time we think we are just too smart to need to study the lessons of history, we lose bits of ourselves.”

So, before the actual breakdown of the Constitution, Webster provides the historical background of why the Constitutional convention was called. The Confederation was in a state of collapse. The Articles of Confederation, which had been written and adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, didn’t go into full effect until all 13 states had ratified it, which didn’t happen until the last holdout, Maryland, signed it on March 1, 1781. So, we were…. literally just 13 colonies in rebellion against the mother country, England, until March 1, 1781, when we became a confederation of 13 independent States, in the formal, global meaning of the word. State meaning political organization of a society or body politic. Then from 1781 to 1787, when the convention was called for, we devolved from 13 states pulling together for independence, to a condition of near anarchy.

The Articles of Confederation were basically unenforceable. Each state may be required to submit X amount in dollars or manpower for the running of the government; however, each state could choose its own timeline for actually producing those dollars and men. So as soon as one or two states decided now is not convenient, the other states started going well if they’re not gonna, I’m not gonna. And so, nothing got done. Which sounds like an anarcho-capitalists paradise, right?

Well, hold on there. The Federalist Papers make some pretty solid arguments for why this is a fool’s paradise. Starting with The Mississippi. Nominally, we had rights of navigation on the Mighty Mississip. In reality, Spain was preventing us from using it for transport. And because we were independent states, and not a Nation, we had no way to argue the point with Spain.

No other Nation would enter treaties with any one state, because there was no way to enforce that treaty on other States. No nation would trade with us, because our borders were insecure, and smuggling was rampant. Now, this to me does not sound like a bad thing, because hey…anarcho-capitalist. But I also have to acknowledge that the vast majority of people are not cut out for anarcho-capitalism. Most people need the security blanket of the government. And I get it. I truly do. Because the major downside of an anarcho-capitalist society is that ultimately, might makes right. Meaning eventually, some big swinging dick is going to show up and bully everyone around him into making him head honcho. It’s basically what happened with Feudalism. Because some kids just don’t want to play nicely with others. Without laws to keep people safe from that, and the government to enforce those laws…. Well, things could get bad, quickly.

And the founding fathers, all of them, were highly educated men. They frequently reference historical events that I had no idea about, founding empires in The Netherlands and Prussia (now Germany). Because those historical events are far removed from modern day America. In my own defense, I also don’t know a great deal about the Egyptian Pharaohs or Chinese emperors. But someone out there knows more than me on all these topics and that is a-OK. I’m working on it.

So, having determined that anarchy and America’s rapid descent into that state would ultimately leave us quite vulnerable to European powers, including a possible second war with England, the Founding Fathers called a convention to re-work the Articles of Confederation. And this Constitution truly is that. It is actually based quite heavily on the Articles of Confederation, but the language is cleaned up and focused, basically pulling heavily from the best parts of the individual state constitutions.

Now, the Constitution itself is quite easy to read without being translated into modern English. This was quite by design, because as the Federalist Papers point out, it is no use having laws that are so onerous the average Man cannot read nor understand them. Ya hear that, Congress? Like what is this bullshit?!

Just an aside…I already started next week’s book. The Introduction addresses exactly that point.

So, THIS book uses Bold Print for the section of the Constitution being addressed. Then the Federalist Paper being referenced, so Number 37. Then the number in [10] is the approximate paragraph number.

Anything in italics are, I believe, Webster’s own thoughts or something she learned along the way.

When an amendment directly alters the nature of the Constitution, she includes the amendment, so the Bill of Rights is not included because none of those altered the Constitution as written. The 13th Amendment IS included because it directly alters the Constitution, namely that infamous 3/5 rule.

I believe this book is a valuable resource and should be read by anyone looking to understand the Constitution and the times in which it was written. However, it sometimes is a little repetitive, as several passages, to be understood in full, are repeated in full, because those passages refer to several different parts of the Constitution. So, for that reason, I’m not sure if reading it beginning to end is the best way to get the most use out of this book. I would keep this as a reference so when I wonder “what did they mean when they said, “All legislative Powers herein granted.”

Well, Webster found exactly what they meant by that. And there is no question that Congress is SUPPOSED to be extremely limited in the laws they can pass to ONLY what is directly granted in Article 1 of the Constitution. It’s for this reason that the Bill of Rights, aka the first ten amendments, were not included in the Constitution. The Founders believed that a bill of rights was not needed, that the Constitution so limited Congress, that highlighting things Congress could not do would essentially target those rights specifically. Can’t say they were wrong.

Something they were wrong on though is, sadly, their faith in the American people, or more specifically, their descendants. I doubt they could have imagined a day when We the People would fall asleep at the wheel and continue to elect and re-elect the absolute dregs of humanity who are only interested in themselves.

Among the final pleas in the Federalist Papers, were to not amend it until after it had passed, because if it’s amended pre-passage, then it’s no longer the Constitution, and would need to be ratified by all 13 states to pass. And it did pass, June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the 9th state to ratify it. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments, were added on December 15, 1791. Initially, 12 amendments were offered up for ratification, but the two that were dropped were one that mandated one representative for every 30,000 until we reached 100 representatives, then that proportion would be regulated by Congress until we reached 200 representatives. This amendment allowed for not more than one representative for every 50,000 people. This one was ultimately dropped. I’m fine with this. The other one that did not pass the initial muster was No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened. This was eventually passed…200 years later on May 7, 1992, when it became the 27th and most recent amendment to the Constitution.

Overall, I quite liked this book. Like I said, it’s a valuable resource that can directly refer you to what exactly the Founding Fathers meant when they put X in the Constitution…whatever X might need explaining to you. She takes the guess work out of history. Which is fantastic, we need more of this.

This book was reviewed on YouTube on September 24, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.