What did the Founders mean in the preamble by: “Provide for the Common Defense”
John Jay said in Federalist 1, “Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their SAFETY seems to be the first.”
This was because, even though we had won the American Revolution, we were not sure that we were going to make it as a nation. The Articles of Confederation were woefully inadequate to the exigencies of our government. Several foreign countries were vying to separate us.
John Jay captures the sentiment of the fledgling states well in Federalist 4:
But whatever may be our situation, whether firmly united under one national government, or split into a number of confederacies, certain it is, that foreign nations will know and view it exactly as it is; and they will act toward us accordingly. If they see that our national government is efficient and well administered, our trade prudently regulated, our militia properly organized and disciplined, our resources and finances discreetly managed, our credit re-established, our people free, contented, and united, they will be much more disposed to cultivate our friendship than provoke our resentment. If, on the other hand, they find us either destitute of an effectual government (each State doing right or wrong, as to its rulers may seem convenient), or split into three or four independent and probably discordant republics or confederacies, one inclining to Britain, another to France, and a third to Spain, and perhaps played off against each other by the three, what a poor, pitiful figure will America make in their eyes! How liable would she become not only to their contempt but to their outrage, and how soon would dear-bought experience proclaim that when a people or family so divide, it never fails to be against themselves.
They knew we needed to unite for our common defense, or we would fail.
Father give us this wisdom and humility today. We need You desperately!
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