The Founders Wanted a Powerful Navy: The Constitution Was Built for It
Constitution Day offers an opportunity to reflect with gratitude on the splendor of our nation’s founding document. The document’s animating concepts, such as limited government, checks and balances, and popular sovereignty should be celebrated—our Founders designed the greatest form of government the world has ever seen.
Historical accounts of the Constitutional Convention often downplay the centrality of one of the goals articulated in the document’s preamble: “to provide for the common defense”. The Articles of Confederation proved insufficient to the task, so the Founders gathered in Philadelphia to establish a new form of government to better secure their liberties and maintain the country’s security. The Constitution they drafted was built on explicitly navalist principles and infused with their understanding that sea power was the most efficacious tool to defend American liberty. Ultimately, the Founders’ preference for a strong navy reveals their intention to build a free, commercial republic.
Despite the American victory in the War for Independence, in 1787 the young republic still faced threats to its security. Colonial powers including Great Britain menaced the nation’s borders. Many—especially on the frontier—feared that European empires would use wars on their continent to seize American lands. The French and Spanish empires still held lands in the New World and both were intent on expanding their territory and suppressing rebellions inspired by the American Revolution within their own colonies.
In Federalist 34 Publius (the pseudonym shared by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison) called this colonial competition “a cloud” that “has been for some time hanging over the European world.” Even with the natural protection of the Atlantic Ocean, he argued that if a war broke out in Europe then “in its progress a part of its fury would” be “spent on us.” Publius also believed the Confederation government was too weak to address the looming crisis. “In the present condition of America, the states more immediately exposed to these calamities, have nothing to hope from the phantom of a general government which now exists,” he wrote in Federalist 41, “and if their single resources were equal to the task of fortifying themselves against the danger, the objects to be protected would be almost consumed by the means of protecting them.”
Read more in The MOC.
