By the mid-1780s many people in the United States recognized that the Articles of

Transcription

1 Constitutional Convention By the mid-1780s many people in the United States recognized that the Articles of Confederation were not taking the country in a desirable direction. Because of this, a convention was called by the Confederation Congress to meet in Philadelphia to amend the Articles. Each state was asked to send delegates to this gathering. The convention was intended to start in the middle of May, but it was not until May 25, that there were enough delegates present to constitute a quorum at which time there were 29 delegates present. Eventually 55 made it to the convention with 29 becoming full-timers. The voting on each issue was done by state, as was the practice in congress. Until late July, when New Hampshire s delegation arrived, there were just 11 states represented. Rhode Island s legislature was controlled by those opposed to a stronger national government, thus it did not send delegates. One of the first issues to come before the delegates was the selection of a chair, and George Washington was unanimously selected to preside over the convention. Convention Outline Some scholars have divided the convention into seven parts: The introduction of the Virginia Plan on May 29; the delegates voting to go into a Committee of the Whole initially for the purpose of debating the Virginia Plan on May 30, but then also for deliberations over both the New Jersey Plan as well as Hamilton s plan on June 18 and 19; from June 20-July 26 the convention went through the recommendations of the Committee of the Whole line by line; the Committee of Detail met from July 24-August 6 and produced a rough draft of the constitution based on decisions previously made by the convention; the delegates debated the draft of the Committee of Detail from August 7-31; the Committee on Postponed Matters met from August 31-September 8 attempting to resolve differences still dividing the delegates, and, finally, from

2 September 9-17 the convention, including the Committee on Style, generated the final draft of the constitution. The Convention Madison spent months preparing for the convention reading all he could find on the history of governments and related topics. While the Virginia delegation waited in Philadelphia for a quorum to develop, they met and discussed Madison s plan in great detail. They decided Virginia s governor, Edmund Randolph, would present the plan to the convention as he had more stature with the rest of the delegates than Madison. The plan, known as the Virginia Plan, eliminated the Articles of Confederation and established in its place a strong national government based on popular will. The plan, also known as the large state plan, removed the state legislatures both structurally, and in terms of power, from any place in the new government. It established a national legislature consisting of two houses. The people of each state would elect the members of the first house, with representation based on the population of each state. The second house of the legislature would then be elected by the first. The legislature would have the power to legislate in all cases to which the separate states could not and could nullify all laws passed by a state that contradicted the national legislature. This legislature would also elect a national executive as well as create and select a national judiciary. The people through assemblies of delegates chosen by the people would ratify this new plan for government. The debate that ensued over the next three months has been described as a process of bargaining and compromise where principle yielded to pragmatism in order to reach agreement and build coalitions. To those supporting the Virginia Plan was the cure for the movement toward excessive democracy and a break up of the Union that they foresaw happening.

3 There were two sets of compromises at the convention, and both yielded to pragmatism. One pitted large against small states and the other, more durable conflict, was between slave and free states. The Great Compromise involving representation in Congress has been called an act of statesmanship while William Lloyd Garrison called the Three-fifths Compromise a Covenant with Death which, nonetheless, attained a political end. The voting at the convention was done as it had always been done in Congress with each state, regardless of size, receiving one vote. Each state delegation would have to vote within itself, and then cast one vote on behalf of the people whom they were representing. In the end, the singular choice the Federal Convention and the delegates gave the nation was either to ratify or not. The nationalist leaders at the convention had no intention of simply revising the Articles of Confederation. They wanted to create a government that was not dominated and controlled by the state legislatures. Furthermore, the states with large populations or those anticipating a large population wanted to rid the national legislature of the equal votes for states. It was Madison s insistence on solving the problem of representation first that set the course of debate for the summer. If the other delegates had arrived on time they would not have had to turn to the Virginia Plan for guidance and the basis of debate. The plan contained the ideas that Madison had been working on during the winter and spring of that year. Not only was the plan the only one on the table at the start of the convention, thus forming the basis for initial discussion, it also sought to defer discussion of governmental powers until a basic agreement of the structure of the government had been reached. As Clinton Rossiter stated, there was nothing that could be called confederate in the plan and not much that could be called federal. (Rossiter )

4 The Virginia and New Jersey Plans The Virginia Plan contained 15 resolutions with the first speaking of correcting and enlarging the Articles, while the remaining 14 called for a government so different in structure from the Articles that there could be no doubt as to Madison s intention. The first resolution was so inconsistent with the others that, when Randolph introduced the plan, Gourvernor Morris moved that the first resolution be replaced with three additional statements that were more forthcoming in acknowledging the real purpose of the Virginia Plan. For the first two weeks of June the delegates debated the representation scheme in the plan that called for both houses of the legislature being based on the population of the individual states. Toward the end of this two-week period Roger Sherman arrive at the crux of the issue when he stated that the smaller states would never agree to a plan that did not at least allow for an equal vote in the Senate. A few days after this declaration by Sherman, William Paterson countered the Virginia Plan with a set of nine resolutions that he hope would supplant the large state plan. The set of resolutions became known as the New Jersey plan and was the result of a combined effort of Paterson, Sherman, Luther Martin, John Lansing. Perhaps the strongest argument against the New Jersey Plan was its dependence on military coercion of the states, a concept unacceptable to Madison and other nationalists. The difficulty those arguing for adoption of the New Jersey Plan had was that the plan was too little, too late, and too insincere. As such, it never had a chance to be the focus of debate at the convention. Alexander Hamilton came to the convention ready to strengthen the central government. After listening to debate on the Virginia and New Jersey Plans for two weeks, on June 18 he rose to give a speech detailing his plan for government. Madison writes in his notes that Hamilton

5 had, up to that point, been silent. He declared that he was not in favor of either plan and was particularly opposed to the New Jersey Plan. He argued the delegates ought to go as far as republican principles would allow in order to achieve stability and permanency. To achieve this, he proposed that one branch of the legislature hold their position for life or at least during good behavior as well as the Executive. During his speech he did not deny that this person could be considered an elected monarch. The speech did have one intended effect and that was to reverse Dickinson s postponement of the debate of the New Jersey Plan. This reversal allowed Madison to be recognized by the chair and rise to criticize the Plan. Negotiations The five weeks following Hamilton s speech were consumed with the political task of coming to an agreement on representation in the legislature. Rossiter describes the 14 working days in July as one of the muddiest process of decision-making in American history. (Rossiter 185) In the end the delegates settled on representation according to population in the House and an equal vote for each state in the Senate. To get there, the Convention agreed to appoint a committee of one member from each state to arrive at some sort of compromise. Many of the people at the convention sensed the small states starting to solidify their position of equal representation and the continual insistence from Madison and Wilson, neither of whom was on the committee, was making matters worse. At the urging of Ben Franklin the committee agreed that each state would have an equal vote in the Senate, but as a concession to the large states, all appropriation bills would originate in the House. The adoption of the Great Compromise on July 16 was a compromise between the nationalist Virginia Plan and the Articles of Confederation.

6 The most difficult question was resolved with the Covenant with Death. It was a question of whether, and how, slaves were to be counted for taxation and representation. As Jack Rakove points out even if its origins were a formula for apportioning representation among, as opposed to within, state, and even if it violated the principle of equality by overvaluing suffrage of the free male population of the slave states, it was, nonetheless a close approximation of one man, one vote. Slavery was not considered to be a critical issue to the delegates attending the convention as they viewed the looming battle of large state versus small state as crucial. How much increased power would the small states allow the restructured government having to regulate commerce as well as the new chief executive. However, when the Virginia Plan was introduced the debate focused on representation and that meant population mattered. If only free men were counted for representation, then the north would overwhelm the south. On the other hand, if slaves were counted equally with free men, then the south would prevail with regards to representation in Congress. The delegates from the Deep South, particularly North and South Carolina and Georgia, were adamant in insisting that slave trade remain legal in the new government. Debate over slavery commenced at the end of May when Madison made a motion to remove the term free inhabitants from the Virginia Plan because he feared it would become a distraction to what he thought were more important matters. The issue resurfaced on June 11 and James Wilson and Charles Pinckney proposed, and the delegates provisionally approving, what eventually became the Three-fifths Compromise. Constitutional Historian Paul Finkleman suggests that this issue began as a struggle between those who wanted to count each slave as an individual for purposes of representation and those who did not want the slaves to count at all.

7 This is in contrast with the traditional view that it was a compromise over representation and taxation. The compromise provided that Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons three fifths of all other Persons. In the original constitution the word slavery does not appear as delegates from both the north and south had reasons for it not to be mentioned. The southerners, for the most part, did not want to unnecessarily aggravate their northern counterparts who, in turn, according to Finkleman had their own particular scruples on the subject of slavery and did not wish the word to appear in the constitution. The two sides may have been able to reach a broader compromise if they had attempted or if Madison s Virginia Plan had not formed the agenda for debate. First, there would not have been an objection to creating a stronger president with at least some degree of independence, although he would not have received all the powers the Constitution ultimately gave him and certainly not the powers that the modern presidency possesses. Second, in general, the small state delegates and those opposing a significantly stronger central government would have preferred a unicameral Congress, the two-house legislature would have been accepted with the stipulation that the Senate be held more accountable to the state legislatures. Third, a federal judiciary would have been accepted with jurisdiction that would have been much more restricted than the provisions in Article Three of the Constitution. However, as Jackson Turner Main argues, it certainly would have been denied jurisdiction over cases between states. Lastly, the government might have been given some such power as is expressed in Article Six s supremacy clause, but with the judiciary or, as a last resort, the army to enforce such a clause.

8 The Constitution and American Political Development The Constitution, as proposed by the delegates, was a blend of the British unitary form of government from which the colonies declared their independence and the Articles of Confederation that most found to be ineffective. The colonists felt oppressed under the unitary government and wished, upon independence, to guarantee that that would not happen again. Further more, the colonists were also recoiling from strong colonial governors many of whom had been corrupt tyrants. The natural reaction when forming a new government would be the opposite of the British unitary form of government and the Articles of Confederation were such. With a nearly impotent national government and thirteen virtually independent states, the country had a form of government that was nearly opposite to the British government. State constitutions were also reactionary documents to the British form of government. Most of the first constitutions had weak chief executives with terms of only one or two years. Additionally, as of 1787, only New York and Massachusetts allowed for the people to directly elect their chief executive. Few state chief executives had a negative or veto at the time of the constitutional convention. Gradually as states experienced the ineffectiveness of weak chief executives, the second and third constitutions gradually gave more power to the position. The Constitution proposed by the delegates in 1787 was a radical strengthening of the powers of the central government. It was a radically democratic document for the time based on popular sovereignty and, for the most part, bypassing the states. There was an energetic chief executive, a bicameral legislature with representation in one house based on population and elected directly by the people. A federal republic had been formed giving significant powers to

9 the central government while reserving significant powers, a form of government that was, and still is, uncommon. Bibliography and further reading Anderson, Thornton. Creating the Constitution: The Convention of 1787 and the First Congress. University Park, Penn: The Pennsylvania State University Press, Kammen, Michael, ed. The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History. New York: Penguin Books, Rakove, Jack. Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. New York: Vintage Books, Rossiter, Clinton. 1787: The Grand Convention, The Year That Made A Nation. New York: Macmillan, Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the American Republic, Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, J. Mark Alcorn Avon, Minn.