Morris wrote in the Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
But perhaps when our fifth grade teachers asked us to memorize these lines, we weren’t able to fully internalize their meaning. We were eleven years old; let’s cut ourselves some slack. What does the Preamble mean? Put more simply:
We, the citizens of this new country that is wholly independent from Britain, want you to know that we intend to:
Establish justice. This phrase gives us a sense of moral rightness, of equality, and of fairness.
Ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. This demonstrates a government’s duty to maintain a sense of peace within its own borders, and establishes its commitment to protect its people from foreign threats.
Promote the general welfare. This means to work for the common good. Over the centuries, what constitutes the “common good” has changed significantly. What was viewed as the common good in 1787 can only be projected onto the present in the vaguest of terms, especially since many of the rights we now enjoy were only extended to a minority of people when the words were originally written. What common good means today is still being refined.
Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. This promise is now a hallmark of any democracy—the protections of civil liberties under the law, and a limiting of the power of the government so people are shielded from an overreaching and authoritarian regime—something Gouverneur Morris said Hamilton feared until the very end.
The text of the Preamble imagined America at its finest:
Just.
Peaceful.
Good.
And free.
With astonishing regularity, Americans have held fast to these ideals, despite the clickbait stories that portend calamity. And America has too often fallen short of these standards. Both of these things are true at the same time.
America has been just, and it has perpetuated injustice. We have been peaceful, and we have perpetrated acts of violence. We have been—and are—good. And we have done terrible things to people who didn’t deserve them. It has been the land of the free while simultaneously sanctioning oppression.
Such is often the experience of any government run by fallible human beings. Sometimes we surprise ourselves in our capacity for greatness, and sometimes the weight of regret wraps around us like a chain.
The ideals outlined in the Constitution represent our national purpose, the raft we must cling to in the storm, the breath in our lungs, the beat in our chest: Just. Peaceful. Good. Free.
Ordinary people conjured this mission. Ordinary men like Gouverneur Morris.
What you’re about to read are the stories of the small and the mighty. The stories of people you may not have heard of, but who changed the course of American history anyway. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Avenue; a young boy detained in a Japanese incarceration camp; a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter; a poet on a train; and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.
It is my hope that by the time you turn the last page of this book, these small and mighty people will become like familiar friends, part of a community of ancestors, a great cloud of witnesses who surround us, those who light the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, more peaceful, more good, and more free.
I’ll be your guide along the way. Welcome.
And buckle up.
Angel of the Rockies
One
Clara BrownKentucky, 1830s
The marketplace buzzed with activity on a sizzling Kentucky day. And just up ahead, to the right, near the wooden platform in the center of town, a heartrending scene was unfolding.
Clara Brown clutched her youngest child close, Eliza Jane’s tear-sodden face disappearing into the fabric of Clara’s dress. Eliza was prone to “fits” of behavior she had difficulty controlling, and she was now sobbing.
“Shhhhhh,” Clara whispered to her. “You have to be a brave girl now.”[1]
She tried to dry Eliza’s face. To wipe her nose. To imbue her with her motherly strength so Eliza could take her turn on the auction block and be sold to a “decent” family, one that would not punish her too harshly. A family that would give her somewhere warm to sleep, and enough food to sustain her and help her grow tall and strong. If Eliza stood there looking like a blubbering mess, she might fetch a bad price and go to a family that couldn’t—or wouldn’t—care for her.
When Clara was born around 1800,[2] she was born enslaved to enslaved parents. As a child, she was sold to a man in another state, a fate that would soon befall her own offspring.[3] Kentucky wasn’t home to the vast plantations of Virginia, where she came from; the land here was more mountainous, the farms were more compact. It’s likely that Clara had many jobs as she grew up, learning to cook, clean, garden, wash, and iron alongside the other enslaved women she lived with.
Unusually for a woman in her circumstances, Clara married for love. Because so little has been recorded about the lives of enslaved people, and what was recorded was often from the perspective of the people who owned them, diaries and letters from the time tell us that Clara’s owners were very happy that she married Richard, and that they threw the new couple a wedding feast to celebrate the union.[4]
It’s difficult today not to be cynical about these accounts—if the enslavers felt genuine affection for Clara and Richard, why didn’t they free them? What were they actually happy about? Was it that they had a family of strong workers living on their farm now, a family that would soon bear children they could sell or enslave as well? Was the marriage for love anything more than dollar signs in the eyes of the people who owned Clara and Richard?
Clara and Richard welcomed a son, Richard Jr., daughter Margaret, and twin baby girls, Paulina Ann and Eliza Jane.[5] Unlike many enslaved people, the family was allowed to live together and to tend to their own garden plot. In the evenings, the children could play in the creek that ran through the property.
Clara’s life changed forever one summer day. In the distance, she heard the unmistakable sound of her eight-year-old daughter screaming, “MAMAAAAAAAAA!” Clara felt a punch in her gut and a weight on her chest that made it hard to breathe. She took off in the direction of her daughter’s voice, her legs moving her six-foot frame at a speed they had never carried her before. She found Eliza creekside, pointing downstream.
“What! What happened? What is it?” Clara cried, the panic rising in her throat.
“PAULINA!” Eliza cried. “PAULINA!”[6]
Eliza had tried in vain to reach her twin, Paulina, who was tangled in the branches that swirled at the edge of the creek. Eliza had watched as her wombmate disappeared under the surface.
Paulina’s body was recovered a short time later. But Eliza’s mind was not. Clara worried desperately about her, worried how she would be treated the rest of her life if she couldn’t snap out of her episodes of staring blankly off into the distance and the crying jags that lasted for hours unabated. Eliza barely slept, which meant Clara barely had a chance to close her eyes.
Today we would recognize the PTSD that Eliza was experiencing, the flashbacks of trying to rescue her entangled sister that seized her at night. The crippling feelings of guilt that it was her fault, the regret she felt because they shouldn’t have been in the creek to begin with.
When the family’s current owner, Ambrose Smith—the one who had thrown them the wedding feast—died in 1835,[7] the family had to be separated and sold, one by one, to settle his estate. Each member of Clara’s family, her husband and four beloved children, took turns stepping up onto the auction block, hoping against hope for some kind of miracle that might allow them to stay together. But none came.
