The US Constitution: 1788 - 1838

Posted by Roger Saunders May 12, 2008

This person listed the five goals as:

1) Establish justice

2) Insure domestic tranquility

3) Provide for the common defense

4) Promote the general welfare

5) Secure the Blessings of Liberty

My response was that the most important goal was missing.

In order to form a more perfect union!

Many framers knew they had it wrong on the issue of slavery but felt unity was more important. We may disagree with this value judgment but at the time I think they truly thought they were doing the best they could while keeping the infant country unified. History is easy to judge based upon what we know now. We must carefully try to understand history’s cultural thinking.

This does not mean that we might not have a better idea about how to correct the problem, but we do have 230 more years of experience to help us make better judgments. The simple fact is that the constitution was designed to allow the US to become a more perfect union. That goal is the only way the other five could be accomplished.

Gouveneur Morris wrote the preamble for the constitution while distilling all of the convention's decisions into one document. He did the country a great service when he added "in order to form a more perfect union" because those words are the life blood of the US Constitution. It has taken too many years and bloodshed to accomplish that goal but it is something that as Americans we can continue to work on in a free country until we get it right. This country has made more progress in its existence than any other with the same amount of time in history.

We still have a long way to go but the Constitution has proven to be the vehicle to take us there.