27:13
- Look at this map. I mean, old document. It's a manifesto, a breakup letter between British people on either side of an ocean. (jaunty music) It's the Declaration of Independence. And no, it's not the real one, I didn't steal it, but I did find a typo, look at this. Okay, right up here at the top, "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America." Look at this, united, lowercase U, tiny little type, not nearly as big as States of America.
(jaunty music) Shouldn't this be an uppercase U for, like, the name of the country, United States, like what we see on my passport? Hmm? (cell phone buzzing) Remember, in 1776, United States didn't mean what it means today. Oh, yes, I'm remembering. Sort of a footnote of history. There was this gap after we declared independence. Like, George Washington was the first President, right? But his presidency started in 1789, 13 years after we declared independence. And that 13 years is what I want to talk about today
because even though I learned about it with a bunch of boring dates and names that I don't really remember, now that I've gone back to understand it, this little gap helps answer a lot of questions I have about our current-day government, how it works, and how it doesn't work. It helps answer why tiny Rhode Island gets the same number of Senators as huge California and why we don't actually vote for our President directly. This gap is United States 1.0, and it failed. It failed miserably. And it all comes back to this little tiny 'united' with the lowercase U here on the Declaration of Independence.
(patriotic music) You know, I bet there's one thing that the founders of this country couldn't have predicted, which is that in the future, in America, people's names and birthdays would be like gold. That is a weird reality of our digital world, and that it has to do with today's sponsor who I'm thinking right now because sponsors are how we make videos. Thank you, Incogni.
Your data, it's valuable. You can make money off of your data. Well, you can't, but there's a shadowy market of data brokers, people who get all of your data, your name, your address, your birthday, your browsing habits, as much data as they can about you, and they sell that on an open market. And there's not like three of these. There are, like, hundreds of these data brokers. You don't know their names, you never see them because they're just quietly, in the background, mining all of your information and then selling it. And the way you see it is through spam, junk mail, your identity being stolen,
your name showing up on people's search sites. I do not like this, so I signed up for Incogni. I gave them permission to go out on my behalf and request that my name and information be taken off of these lists. I legally have the right to do that. It's just a really hard, cumbersome process. And since I did that, I'm happy to report that my life has changed. I don't have to do anything. Go into this dashboard and just see all of the progress that has been made. Incogni has sent over 1,000 requests to get my data back, and 906 of them have been completed, 132 in progress.
I can even see a list of the actual companies that had my information. I love this stuff. And now, they have this feature where you just send them a link of a place that has your data, and they will go take care of it for you. Custom removal, it's good stuff. And if you want a 60% discount, you can go to incogni.com/johnnyharris and use my code. It's just JOHNNYHARRIS with no spaces. You get 60% off the monthly plan, which is what I use, so that they're scrubbing it month after month, making sure that my data doesn't end up on these lists again.
Thank you, Incogni, for sponsoring today's video. And now, for the education about the Constitution that I never got, but I'm about to give you. In American schools, we learn about the Thirteen Colonies, and right away you see something that a lot of people get wrong about this, including me, which is back then, no one called them the Thirteen Colonies. They were actually 13 totally separate individual colonies. Yes, they were all British, but some of them had really independent government from Britain, some of them were more tightly controlled, some of them were kind of like given and controlled by some rich guy and his rich family back in Britain.
But the point is they were all independent from each other. They were not like one united thing, that is, until Britain needed money. - For if we allow ourselves to be taxed again, arbitrarily without our own consent, there is no hope for any of us. - The Brits had been fighting the French in one of many wars between the two, and they accrued a massive war debt. They needed money, and so they started enforcing a bunch of new taxes on their colonies in America. And this, I did learn about in school. And I remember the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, the Sugar Act, and I always thought they were, like, super high,
like oppressive taxes. Turns out they kind of weren't. They were fairly reasonable taxes, like a sales tax. So, these taxes weren't that high, but they were suddenly being aggressively enforced. And the British people living in America were thinking, "What's gonna stop this far-away, out-of-touch, way-too-powerful parliament back in England from just hiking up taxes even further, and there's nothing we can do about it?" This is taxation without any representation. And that feeling is a collective feeling. It leads the colonies to start to talk to each other, to start to coalesce, to start to make a plan to push back against these new taxes.
(drum beating) They start boycotting British goods or protesting by throwing a bunch of British tea into the water as it came into port. So British troops start showing up to enforce these new taxes, and you start to get a rise of tensions. You start to get violence breaking out. And so now, the colonies are in this fight together. And soon, a 33-year-old political theory nerd is spending two weeks in his bricklaying friend's house in Philly, writing this manifesto that declares the thirteen colonies' intent to start their own thing. - [Narrator] One of the greatest documents of history, the Declaration of Independence.
- Oh, and by the way, while we're talking about Thomas Jefferson's worldview, did you know that he once was asked if he had to choose between living in a government with no newspaper, or having newspaper with no government, he would choose the free press, a newspaper. We also believe in the power of the free press, which is why we're building Newpress, a place that reimagines journalism, does journalism for the people and not just at them. Go to newpress.com to join the wait list and help us save the fourth estate. (compelling music)
And here comes the typo that isn't a typo. The reason why this U is tiny is because "united states" was more of a description of what these people were doing. These colonies were agreeing simultaneously to break away from Britain together. They were united in this act of independence. United, in this context, was like thirteen. Thirteen united States of America. It was a description of what they were doing and how they were doing it, but the document itself makes very clear that they were now, quote, "Free and independent states."
I mean, the word states back then, and still today, means a sovereign independent thing. So that's what they're declaring. 13 independent states who are united in their act of independence. And then they make an agreement among themselves of what they will be. The Articles of Confederation, independent states that are kind of united in a Confederation of states, or in their lukewarm words.
♪ A firm league of friendship ♪ - Oh, God, what is my job? I mean, this whole revolution was about throwing off a big, powerful, centralized government that was far away and out of touch from the people. They weren't about to recreate it. They wanted it to be as fractured, and separated, and local as possible, and that's why you get 13 independent states. - [Narrator] So strongly did they cherish independence that many did not want to endanger it with any form of strong central government.
- [Johnny] But for now, they unite, so that they can fight a war against the British to actually make this all possible. (thunder rumbling) - [Narrator] 1777, Valley Forge. We fought and froze, suffered and died for the future freedom of all Americans. - This wasn't just all of Americans versus the British. This was actually kind of our first civil war. There was a bunch of people here who didn't want to break away from Britain, and they were on the side of the Brits, and this was actually a big global war.
Britain's enemies, France, Spain, and the Dutch, supported the Americans. They loved watching this big impervious empire get, like, split up. They also fought the British elsewhere in the world to weaken them, to spread them out. And it was honestly kind of a game-changer for the rebel fighters that were trying to throw off the most powerful empire in the world. So this civil-slash-global rebellion war thing happens for a few years, and it's terrible, and a lot of people die, and George Washington sails across this icy river, kind of. And the Americans win.
The British sign a treaty, they give up, they're like, "Okay, you win fair and square, it's all yours." And in the treaty, they don't say that the United States of America is now a new country. They specify every single one of these states is their own thing. They're free, they're independent. "His Britannic Majesty acknowledges New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware," etc, etc. And by the way, I don't wanna lean too hard into, like, the lowercase U because there were instances where the uppercase U showed up.
Don't like overread into it, but the fact is, that these were independent sovereign states. They were not one country the way we think of it today. (pensive music) Anyway, it's 1783, and these 13 states are a coalition, like an alliance, and they have exactly what they fought for, what they wanted, which was independence. They disbanded the big army that they needed to fight off the British, and they went about figuring out how they wanted to do government, each of them doing it in their own way.
(jaunty music) But, they wanted to have a Congress to make sure that they could talk about certain things. Every state would get one vote, and that's it. Like, the Congress was a very weak thing. It was there to basically settle disputes between the states to be their representation when doing foreign affairs, like talking to other countries or talking to the native tribes, which there was a lot of negotiation having to happen there. But they can't make any binding laws and they can't enforce taxes.
They have no power to do that. It's kind of like the UN or NATO. We are an alliance, but we can't force you to do anything. And the real power to do anything was up here with the states, not down here with a little baby Congress. (jaunty music) So, let's check in on the 1780s and see how they're doing. (jaunty music) - [Narrator] 13 separate, independent states, each had its own tariff and trade regulations and its own money. Each state was sovereign. (jaunty music) - So, it's not going great. In theory, they were all so excited. They won, they beat the British.
It was, like, this whole big experiment, and it was just not going great at first. There's border disputes. The states all have different trade rules, and they're putting tariffs on each other. - I see here that you have 100 of these kegs of nails in transit from New York to Connecticut. Now, the tariff on these nails- - The tariff on those. How can the state of New York levy a tariff on nails to be sold in the state of Connecticut? - Maryland and Virginia are fighting over the rights to navigate their shared river, the Potomac, in the same way that two countries do this today.
Meanwhile, the Congress, the one thing that binds them all together, is trying to like figure this out and resolve disputes between them, but is finding it has no power to do any of it. No one cares. They try to hold meetings to be like, "Okay, guys, let's settle our problems here. We need to, like, have a unified, like, trade policy." And it's, like, no one's showing up to the meetings. (crickets chirping) But there's one guy who's watching all of this, and his mind is spinning. He sees how broken this system is.
He's seen that the states can't even work out trade because no one is in charge. And he, by the way, I'm talking about James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, he spends his time studying democracies, like all the democracies you can imagine from all of time, little democracy experiments that have never been done on a huge scale. And he's trying to figure out what the Americans can learn to do this right. He's writing letters to his friends about the, quote, "Thinness of Congress," and how it's been an obstacle. Meanwhile, things continue to get really bad in the Confederacy.
American merchant ships start to be attacked and captured off the coast of North Africa, and there's no Navy to protect them. Meanwhile, to just rub in their face how much the new country isn't working, Britain hasn't left. Their military is still in American territory. And guess what? There's nothing the Americans can do about it. Yes, they have a treaty saying they're independent, and that the British should leave, but the British are like, "We're staying.
Fort Niagara, Fort Detroit, we're staying till they kick us out." (pensive music) Meanwhile, the super-weak Congress is in debt, to make matters worse, and they're like, "We need money, let's raise some taxes." "Triggered," says all the states at the same time because they don't like taxes. And remember, this is like NATO, so all that Congress can do is ask or beg for money. And the states are like, "No, we're not paying." And they don't, and it's a total crisis. (pensive music) Meanwhile, the states themselves have to raise taxes because they're also in debt from the war, and their people are hating it, especially in Massachusetts, where all these farmers who just got done fighting a war about taxes
are now being taxed by their government, and the government's threatening to take away their land, and this is just bad. - We're not gonna stand by and watch the people lose their homes, see you take away their land! (crowd clamoring) This is unlawful rebellion against the sovereign state of Massachusetts! - Boy, wouldn't it be nice if we had a military to go put down the rebellion in Massachusetts? Alas, we are a confederation.
♪ A firm league of ♪ - Nope. Everything continues to devolve into chaos. (suspenseful music) (text crackling) And you know who's most bummed? George Washington, hero of the Revolutionary War. He's sitting there in retirement in his house in Virginia, and he's watching the grand American experiment just crumble before his eyes. And he actually finds it really embarrassing. He's writing letters to his friends, calling it the Disunited States. That's good, saying that, quote, "We're fast-verging on anarchy and confusion." And he tells his friends that unless the United States can get it together,
quote, "We shall soon molder into dust and become contemptible in the eyes of Europe." The laughingstock. They're now just total failures, and George Washington is super embarrassed. So more and more, the leaders of these 13 states are realizing things need to change, and none more passionate than our guy James Madison. Back in the story. He says, "It's time to talk," and he gets his state Virginia to call for a conference with all of the states, these conferences that no one ever comes to. He's like, "We're gonna get them all to come and we're gonna tell them that things need to change."
He invites all the 13 states. It's gonna happen in Annapolis, Maryland. The big conference to save their revolution. They set a date, they send out the invites, and when the day for the big meeting comes, only five states show up, like not even half. Whoo, man, a total bust. Now, there is one guy who shows up, who was George Washington's old assistant from the war. ♪ Alexander Hamilton ♪ ♪ My name is ♪ - He, too, is on board with the fact that this isn't working, calls it a national humiliation. He wants to fix it as well. So he and Madison are bonding over their embarrassment of the Confederation, and Hamilton's like, "All right, I will call another meeting.
I'll get everyone on board and we're gonna fix this thing." Congress agrees, and soon there's another meeting on the books, this time in Philadelphia. The goal of this meeting will be to revise the system, to change it, and to fix it so that it actually works. James Madison is, of course, stoked on this, but something is eating at him. After all of his studying of every democracy experiment that has existed, he is feeling sure about something, which is that a revision to the current system is not gonna work. It's gonna have to be scrapped completely and rebuilt from the ground up.
There has to be a strong centralized government, one thing, a blob that actually has power over all 13 states. People are going to hate this idea, Madison knows. But the bigger problem is: What if no one shows up to this meeting? What if they don't take it seriously? So, James Madison goes back to his friend and fellow Virginian, George Washington, and begs him to come, like, "George, everyone loves you. If you're on the guest list, all the states will send their best people and people will feel reassured that we're not remaking the government into tyranny. That's, like, your whole brand. Please come."
"Okay, fine." (compelling music) (people clamoring) "It's hot in here. Will somebody open a window?" "No, they're gonna hear us." So, it's 1787, and these guys are sitting around, admitting to themselves that their system is not working. They need to change it. And James Madison is wondering how on earth he is going to break it to the group that everything needs to change. He can't be the front man himself. He's not prestigious enough. He needs a higher profile of Virginian than he, and he chooses this guy, Edmund Randolph, Virginia's governor, to sell the plan to the group.
The governor gets up there and reminds everyone something very important about the Articles of Confederation, which is that if they want to revise the Articles of Confederation, it requires every state to agree on the revision. To get 100% agreement's gonna be really, really hard. So, what if we start from scratch? Madison's loving this, he's like, "Good job. Good job, Edmund. You did great up there." But "Not so fast," says the delegate from New Jersey. "We're not gonna scrap our entire system.
We just need to beef up the Congress with a few more powers, and we're good." - You'll see I've enlarged the revenue powers of the Congress, but maintained the principle of equal representation for every state. - I am particularly pleased with this. - Madison is shaking his head over there. He's been waiting for this moment for years. He knows what needs to happen. He spent way too much time on this to let frigging New Jersey mess it up. So, he jumps into the debate himself.
He says, "Listen, guys, I've been studying every republic that has ever been tried, and I see that our problem is too much power in the hands of the states. We're all just going to bicker, and cheat each other, and ignore national laws, and that's exactly what's happening. If we keep this up, everything will collapse. We need a stronger central government, which I know, I know, you're all very skeptical of because of Britain, but I think I know how he can build one that won't get out of control and turn into tyranny."
He makes the case, it resonates, and the people agree to go with the Madison plan, the Virginia Plan is what it's called, and it becomes the basis for scrapping the entire system of the lukewarm league of friendship. ♪ Firm league of ♪ - And starting something totally new, and it kicks off three sweaty months of debate. (people clamoring) They have a lot to debate. How will the states and people be represented in the Congress? Some states have a lot of people, some states have very few.
Do they all get the same representation, or should the states with more people have more representation in the new powerful Congress? Also, should we have a head of state that is, like, one person who represents us? Sounds an awful lot like a king. But we kind of need someone who can make fast decisions, represent us abroad. How much power should they have? What about slavery? That's legal in a lot of these states and the basis of the entire economy for several of them.
Are slaves counted in the population numbers for representation? Could Congress ban the slave trade? How should voting work? Who's gonna collect the taxes? Should judges be chosen, elected? How much power should the states retain? Should we be able to change the Constitution if we mess something up? And it was draft, after draft, after draft, revision, and rewrite, until September. September of 1787, when they finally emerged with this. - [Narrator] The Constitution, the sacred charter of "We the People."
(pensive music) - This is the document that creates a new set of rules, a new governmental design to rescue their grand experiment, the rulebook for the first-ever large-scale experiment with representative government, and the solution to the United States 1.0. (pensive music) So, it actually took me all of that context to feel like I could finally approach the Constitution, this thing I've been hearing about my entire life, and understand why it was written the way it was. (suspenseful music) I now see the Constitution as a reaction to three major lessons that were learned from the failure of the Articles of Confederation.
(mellow music) (typewriter clacking) Lesson number one, having a very weak central government that can't really do anything is bad. We all just saw what a disaster that was. So the fix was to create a central government with actual power. They call it a national government. It is no longer a Confederation, and the new government has some serious real powers this time. It can actually tax Americans directly.
It can have an army, it can regulate the economy, commerce between the states, no more random tariffs and border disputes about navigation rights. So, that was lesson number one, a stronger government, which is what everyone agreed they needed. The other big lesson is the classic one that we've been talking about the whole time, that you can't have too much power concentrated in that government. Remember, the whole revolution was about an out-of-touch, far-away, overly-powerful, unrepresentative government that was imposing taxes.
People are still really worried about this. It didn't go away, so the new system had to account for that. They need to make this new government king-proof, to make sure that not one person or group gets too much power for too long. And their solution is to spread the power out in a lot of different places. Specifically, they were leaning on the work of a French guy named Charles, who we call Montesquieu, who had been writing about the separation of powers. And even the states themselves had been kind of experimenting with this. And the idea was that in every government, there are three sorts of power. That's Charles talking. And the three sorts of power are the writing of the law, the enforcing of the law,
and the settling disputes of the law. Love that. So instead of just having a Congress like in the old model, we'll branch the power of the government into three parts: the Congress will write the laws, the executive branch will enforce them, and a court system will settle disputes within the law. Let's do a data viz using the Constitution, chopping it up into its seven chapters or articles. These first three are the three branches of government. And this big monster, which is actually two pages that we had to put together for this little data viz is the Congress.
The branch of the government that writes the laws. It is the first, and by far, the longest section of the Constitution. It's the one that they thought the longest and hardest about because it is the most important in a representative democracy. It is the Congress that makes the laws that we all have to abide by. It is the Congress that could take money from people in taxes.
It's the Congress that declares war on other countries. It's a lot of power centralized in one branch of government. So, to decentralize it even more, they split it into two. Now, to pass a law, both of these Congresses have to agree on the verbatim wording of the law. It forces them to compromise, to negotiate. Yet another trick to stop any one person or group from getting too much power. Okay, next you have the executive branch.
This is the president. So, they did indeed settle on having a single head of state. The President has to sign the laws that the Congress makes. They're supposed to make sure that whatever laws Congress passes, that they're enforced, that people are actually following them. And if they're not, that they are facing justice. But it wouldn't be a prime minister, it wouldn't be elected by the Congress. It was something new, and it would be kind of the face of the nation, the representative of the United States to other countries.
The President would be able to make decisions quickly, to act fast in the case of a crisis, like a bunch of farmers storming the government. - See you take away their land! (crowd clamoring) - And he would command the military. But importantly, the President was not to be a king. He can only spend money if Congress gave him that money. The Congress could even kick him out at any point, and you have to be elected.
Okay, now the third branch of government is this little tiny one here. The Supreme Court. This would be judges who would settle ambiguity or disputes between the states and about the laws that Congress had made and that the President enforces. The judges would be appointed by the President and approved by the Congress. So, this is how Madison and co. convinced the group to let there be a properly centralized government, to split it up in all these clever ways. But wait, the states were not about to give up all of their power to go from, like, sovereign entities to, like, having no power at all. So baked into this Constitution is a fourth branch of power, which is the states themselves.
The states would be in charge of handling everything else that the federal government doesn't handle: elections, education, property law. If you steal a horse, you'd be tried in a state court, not a federal court. Most important things are happening at the state level. And of course, all of this power would be derived from the people it governs. Everyone would have to stand for some kind of accountability to the people, something that would allow the people to kick their leaders out if they didn't like how they were being governed. But wait, there's a snag here.
And this gets us to our third and final big lesson that this document solves for. Remember that one time when Massachusetts needed to pay back its war debt, and it like taxed its people, and then they like stormed the government, and it was a rebellion? - We're here to get justice. - Yeah, no one forgot about that. And in fact, James Madison was very skeptical of the passions of the people. What happens if they're just frustrated one year and they just upend the whole system? Mob rule, pissed-off masses acting in the impulse of the moment, or in their words, "The turbulence and weakness of unruly passions."
These were elite, land-owning white dudes. They didn't really have a lot of respect for the masses. (pensive music) - The people should have immediately as little to do as may be about the government. The people want for information and are constantly liable to be misled. - So the solution was to limit where the will of the people could have direct impact. They make it so that the Congress, remember it's split into two, has one half that is directly representative of the people.
The House of Representatives would give a representative to every 30,000 people or so, and they'd be elected every two years. So, voters can easily replace them. This house would be responsive to the will of the people. But then the other house, the Senate, would be completely different. Each state, regardless of how many people would have two Senators, and the Senators would only be up for election every six years.
Oh, and at first, the people didn't even vote for the Senators. They would be elected by each state's legislature. And yes, the state legislatures would be elected by the people. So, there is still representation here, but it was super indirect. And since a law can only pass if both Houses approve it, you now have a Congress where even if the angry masses of the House of Representatives are clamoring for some radical new law, the Senate, which is less directly exposed to the masses, would be able to have a level head about it, to think more long-term, to think it through and only pass it if they deem it good for the country.
Oh, and they did this weird non-democracy thing for the President, too. The President is elected every four years not by the people, but rather by a weird mishmash of a bunch of other methods. And hold on to your hats for this one. The President would get picked by a special group of people who are called electors. Electors would be chosen by each state however they want, with states getting a number of electors, basically proportional to its population. Then, the electors from this electoral college, like college, not like that college, but like a group of colleagues or an association, that kind of college.
Anyway, they vote on behalf of their states and they choose a President. I mean, it's so freaking convoluted. It was convoluted back then, it's still pretty convoluted today, but at least we, like, vote ourselves and we feel like we're choosing the president? And then thirdly, while we're talking about too much democracy, they made sure that the judges wouldn't be elected, that the judges could serve for life, they'd be chosen by the President, serve for life, and they would ideally not be exposed to the incentives of politics, that they would be neutral and only focused on interpreting the law, which, like, that worked out for a while. So, yeah, the people are connected to the government in a real way, but it's very indirect, and that is intentional.
(suspenseful music) (toy blowing) Okay, so, that's it. That is what they did to replace the failure of America 1.0. This design that was meant to keep power out of the hands of a few people and to change the old way, where subjects are ruled by kings to now, citizens being ruled by law. And yes, there's democracy here, but it's not like a full-fledged democracy. It's very diluted and indirect. The power is spread all over the place, which means making the government work will require the branches to work together.
There must be compromise. If they want to get anything done, they need to share power. They need to stop each other if one side is getting too powerful. And everyone loved it. Oh, wait, no, not everyone loved it. - [Crowd] Aw. - There's a bunch of people who hated this, people who were in the room, and there's a bunch of people who didn't sign it, including Edmund Randolph? The front man for James Madison for selling the whole plan of a centralized government, he doesn't sign it? Yeah, he was like, "This is way too much power to give to the central government." In fact, he said this plan contains, quote, "The fetus of monarchy,"
which I'm like, "Hmm, is this a prophecy for today?" So, he doesn't sign the Constitution. And in fact, even the ones who wrote the Constitution, who did sign it, knew that this was incomplete. And so they actually baked in something here at the end, this little nub. It's the section that's, like, "In case we get something wrong or forgot an important thing," section. It's how the Constitution can be changed. Thomas Jefferson was big on this. He was, like, "You might as well try to wear the same coat you wore as a kid when you're an adult."
What? Meaning, the system's gonna change. We need to upgrade our clothes. We need this thing to be flexible. Everyone agrees, the states ratify it. George Washington becomes the first President. And to help calm those people who felt like this was way too much power to give to the government, they immediately passed 10 amendments to the Constitution that explicitly codified what the government can't mess with. The freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom to bear arms, all of these things, to make sure that people feel comfortable with this new system, even in spite of all the power it gives the central government.
But, it's kind of just the beginning. And in fact, I'm interested in what happens next, because once they ratify this thing, this document goes under some stress tests. As the country grows, almost rips itself apart in a civil war, but somehow the Constitution endures and flexes. I would love to hear your questions in the comments. Anything that you want to know about how our government works today, how the Constitution has held up. Thanks for being here, and thanks to all of those who support us over at Newpress with your ideas, with your contributions.
Newpress is our crowdsourced journalism project that is redefining how we do journalism and bringing the audience way deeper into our reporting. With that, I will see you in the next one. (pensive music)
