The Mount Rushmore of Article V supporters

At times, the road to an Article V convention can feel like an uphill climb. Despite our best efforts, commitment, and passion for the project, sometimes, it seems, it just won’t catch on. It can feel like the nation is blind to — or worse, apathetic about — the Article V solution to federal tyranny and other forms of national dysfunction.

It wasn’t always this way. Although we have sadly never convened an Article V convention, as many of the Founders assumed we would, this method for amending the Constitution was once talked about freely and openly by many of the most central figures in American history.

Indeed, Article V itself is central to American history, a capstone of constitutional governance. We must remember (and force our critics to remember) that every time someone refers to, as Calvin Coolidge put it, the “political privilege” of living “under the American Constitution,” they are referring, in part, to Article V: the clear-cut exceptionalism of our governing charter does not exclude this tragically overlooked provision.

Introducing the Mount Rushmore of Founding-era Article V supporters.

We have inherited the illustrious legacy of our forebears’ impressive scholarship concerning the Article V convention process and their advocacy for the same. By calling a convention, we can honor these five American heroes (who says our Mount Rushmore can’t have five faces??) and finally bring their dreams for the country to fruition.

1. George Mason

Col. George Mason, the Father of Article V, is an obvious candidate for this list. We wouldn’t be here without him. As James Madison recorded in his notes on the Constitutional Convention, Mason “thought the plan of amending the Constitution exceptionable [and] dangerous. As the proposing of amendments is in both the modes to depend, in the first immediately, in the second, ultimately, on Congress, no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive, as he verily believed would be the case.” To remediate this concern, he “moved to amend the article so as to require a Convention on application of [two-thirds] of the [states].” In a rare show of unity, the convention unanimously adopted Mason’s proposal.

2. James Madison

I recently wrote an extensive review of Madison’s debated views on amending the Constitution through an Article V convention. In short, he was favorable to the idea. Article V served as a check and balance on centralized power, the great equalizer between federal and state authority, he wrote in Federalist 43. “[Article V] equally enables the general and the state governments to originate the amendment of errors, as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side, or on the other.” On another occasion, he suggested that the convention method could be used to “better adapt the Constitution for the purposes of its creation.”

3. Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton’s Article V commentary is, perhaps, my favorite. In Federalist Paper No. 85, Alexander Hamilton concludes his appeal to the American people to support the new Constitution by emphasizing the safety and stability guaranteed by Article V. He argues that thanks to Mason’s provision, there is no need to fear that federal politicians will ever seize too much power. “By the fifth article of the plan… we may safely rely on the disposition of the state legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority,” he asserts.

4. Thomas Jefferson

The great American political writer Thomas Jefferson contributed to the wealth of Article V literature in an 1823 letter from Monticello, referring to the convention as the “ultimate arbiter” between the states and the national government.

5. George Washington

Like Madison, the Father of his country believed the state-led convention process could “better adapt the Constitution for the purposes of its creation.” Indeed, in his Farewell Address, arguably Washington’s most memorable discourse, the president remarked, “If in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.” 

And now… YOU

Each day, as we embark on the long, wearisome path toward the first-ever Article V convention, let us remind ourselves that we are advancing the legacy of great visionaries like Mason, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington. We stand on the substratum of their advice, and those who oppose us must ultimately reject their wisdom.

America cannot continue to run from her history. May the 2020s be a decade of reckoning, in which we finally give an account for our historical failure to employ what Jefferson called the “ultimate arbiter.”

“[A]ll the declamation about the [federal government’s] disinclination to… change vanishes in air” with the Article V convention, Hamilton wrote.

You and I must be the ones to force that to happen. It may not be easy. But our history demands it of us.

And we have a Mount Rushmore of supporters in our corner.

Sign the Convention of States petition below to show your support!