When I have questions about or frustrations with our American system – what’s right, what’s wrong and how we should think about operating as good citizens – I turn to reading about the past. And as much as possible, I try to read the words of the Founders themselves.
Sometimes a single line is just the thing to hear for inspiration or to remind us about the importance of the American idea. However, that doesn’t always paint a full picture so it’s necessary to go deeper.
I ran across one example of a famous quote, something many know very well and see quoted all the time but I never completely looked into to see where exactly it came from. While the line is iconic and succinct on its own, I found reading about its context more interesting and more of an insight into something that’s easy to forget.
The famous line is: “A republic, if you can keep it,” the straightforward warning about the fragility of America’s future, attributed to Benjamin Franklin just after the Revolution.
It comes from a reported exchange between Franklin and a woman named Elizabeth Willing Powel, first appearing in a 1787 journal entry by James McHenry, a delegate from Maryland to the Constitutional Convention. McHenry’s notes covered proceedings of the day, which mainly dealt with attempting to convince three apprehensive delegates to vote in favor of the newly presented Constitution.
After the vote, McHenry wrote that Franklin left Independence Hall and was greeted by Powel who reportedly asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” His response was, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The meaning of that line, whether actually from Franklin’s lips or not, is easy enough to understand – America will be free as long as its people work to ensure that happens. The quote forces us to confront that daunting idea that the country’s health isn’t abstract; its success is in our hands. While the quote is heavy with portent, Franklin’s other comments that day bear some revisiting and should perhaps be equally well known.
In an effort to convince the delegates to support the Constitution, Franklin also said, “I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”
Franklin noted the importance of keeping an open mind and recognized that, in order to make this all work, for progress to happen and bills to pass, we have to be willing to compromise.
Franklin drives this point home with further consideration that people are fickle and selfish. He notes that he is willing to compromise because it’s the necessary thing to do in order to jumpstart this idea of self-government:
“In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered,” he said. “And believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”
If we aren’t thinking about the American system in those terms, we’re not thinking seriously enough about what we are doing and how easily this all could collapse. Saying, “we need to work together” feels trite and insincere, but it’s true. It was true then as it is now. If we are to keep the republic Franklin talked about, working together to reach a compromise is the only choice we’ve got.
-Michael Williamson is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.