Historian confronts complexities of early America's self-evident truths

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/historian-confronts-complexities-early-americas-self-evident-truths
MGB: The opinions of liberal scholars have nothing to do with the use of originalism, that is the realm of judges, who are increasingly and appropriately utilizing history in ruling on cases. This did not begin with Scalia and won't end because he is gone. Such arguments are informative (like foreign law) but not controlling, as is precedent, which is a complicated word for history. The evolution of culture is factual, which answers Scalia's of question of how we can use it to rule. Usually the evolution of law takes care of this, but sadly, reactionaries like Scalia and his friends in the legislature hold onto old prejudices.

The Gettysburg Address captures the why of the quote, from which it is drawn, and the context is not the founders, it is the Civil War itself. Still, speeches don't make law. The better work to analyze law in this period is Democracy Reborn by Garrett Epps,. Scalia would never cite it because Epps calls Scalia an idiot in so many words.

Sadly, while the 14th Amendment passed, even Franklin Douglass told his allies in the women's movement that both black and female suffrage was too much to pass. The 14th Amendment was gutted by Plessey v. Ferguson until the Warren Court dusted it off, while the Progressive Amendments enacted the income tax, senatorial election, women's suffrage and alcohol prohibition in the 1910s. It is amazing at that time, it was easier to get an Amendment passed than move the Court.

The founders thought they could finesse the race question due to the difficulty in processing cotton. Eli Whitney, by making cotton easy to process, ended that possibility and de facto slavery (Read Blackman's Slavery by Another Name_) kept  blacks in bondage (including children) until automated cotton manufacturing was developed. 

Social class bowed to economics, as it does with immigration reform, which keeps migrants out of the law and exploitable. Capitalist consider them property, as were both slaves and wives (who were kept out of the labor force unless they were in the underclass, to keep them subject to their husbands. The Sexual Revolution was more about their emancipation than unbridled lust.

Modern conservatives, including pro-lifers, dislike the 14th Amendment. The  founders, who were Masonic as a civic virtue, were not  anti-Catholic for this reason. Indeed, it is the Catholic Church that was anti-Mason - a stupid dictate we still suffer from. Democracy was also considered a heresy (although more in Italy) as Mirare Vos demonstrates. An oppressive Catholic Church made anti-Catholicism rationale, though inconsistent with the founding. It was the marginalization of the Pope in Europe that made equality for Catholics possible.  It was not constitutionalized until evolving law moved the First Amendment to the states, with the 14th guaranteeing religious liberty as well. That evolving law protects the Church while Scalia railed against it is the ultimate irony for originalism.