The Constitutional Convention

The Constitutional Convention The newly-elected 112th Congress made history on January 6, 2011. For the first time ever, members read the U.S. Constitution aloud on the floor of the House of Representatives. Immediately, debate in the media and public erupted over the political motivations behind the gesture, and even the form it took. Congress decided to omit portions of the original Constitution that were later amended. That means, for instance, that the three-fifths compromise, which secured slavery in the nation until the Civil War, was left out of the reading. Should the ENTIRE document and all amendments have been read? Or did members do the right thing in reading the amended version? What motivated these members of Congress to do this? I have my viewpoint, and you probably have yours. Our viewpoints might coincide, and they might be completely in opposition to one another. One thing s certain most Americans have strong emotions and opinions about the U.S. Constitution. When our political take office they swear to uphold and defend the Constitution. When we say the pledge of allegiance, we are in essence doing the same thing. It is this historic document that provides the framework for our government, secures our rights and liberties, and binds us together as citizens. Yet the document also has flaws, has been open to interpretation, and has been a fountainhead of fierce political battles and human dramas. Learning about the U.S. Constitution is an essential element of any American Government class. In this course we ll be examining how this framework for government was established, the rights and liberties it enshrined, and how this framework for government and our rights and liberties have evolved over time. Before we do this, we should know a bit about the history of the document and the fifty-five men, who I ll call the Framers, who wrote it. Many of these individuals were some of the most important Founding Fathers of America. Some were leaders of the protest movements that developed before the Revolutionary War, others were participants in the 1st Continental Congress while others attended the 2nd Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. Here are three main themes to this lecture: First, we ll trace the history and background to the writing of the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. Second, we ll take a look at the type of government the Framers established and consider democratic and undemocratic features of the original document. Third, we ll examine the role of compromise in creating the Constitution. Let s start by considering this question: What was the first form of government that the United States of America adopted? The correct answer is a confederacy. If you answered differently, you re not alone. Many Americans forget, or just don t know, that from the time of the American Revolution until 1789, the thirteen original states were governed under the Articles of Confederation. This is one of two periods in American history when a confederacy existed. The other time, of course, was from 1861 to 1865, during the Civil War, when southern states left the Union and declared themselves the Confederate States of Page 1 of 7

America. But let s return to the Constitution. This treasured document was written in 1787, four years after the end of the American Revolution, and it didn t go into effect until another two years later. The American Constitution was the first written constitution of its kind. A written constitution guaranteeing the establishment of a government as Abraham Lincoln would state many years late, of the people, for the people, and by the people truly was a revolutionary change. Obviously, our nation got off to a rocky start, and our first form of government was deficient. So before we begin discussing our Constitution, we need to take a close look at the road that led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Americans before the American Revolution had a great deal of experience with self-government. Prior to the 1750s, Britain gave her American colonies a lot of freedom. The mother country made decisions on foreign policy, and war, but left local governing to the colonists themselves. Royal governors were appointed by the crown, but they were generally weak figures with limited powers. American colonies also developed legislative bodies and adopted written constitutions. The first legislative body in America was the Virginia House of Burgesses, which was established in 1619. So, with the creation of this institution, along with signing of the Mayflower Compact in 1620, one can see the beginnings of democracy in America. Over the course of the next 150 years the American colonies grew economically and in population as more immigrants arrived and through natural population increase. The political systems of the colonies evolved to deal with new challenges of American life. Close ties with Britain were maintained but Americans also began to develop an independent streak. The relationship between the American colonies went through ups and downs, but things really began to change during French and Indian War in the 1750s and early 60s. Britain was in a serious struggle with France over control of North America. Although Britain won, the war was costly, plunging Britain into debt, and requiring monies to defend her new lands won from France. Britain tightened control over her American colonies, taxing them more heavily in the belief that they should pay more for their own defense. American colonists, many of whom had participated in the conflict, were also prohibited from expanding into the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains when the Proclamation of 1763 was adopted. This act was not popular in America. The King, Parliament, and royal governors increasingly took power from the colonists, threatening democratic traditions that had developed in the colonies. Actually, they were following a trend that was taking place in other European nations the concentration of power in a centralized government. American colonists, having developed a relatively independent spirit, were not willing to submit to the British efforts to exert more control. Therefore, the American Revolution was a reaction against this attempted centralization of power. In 1775 the Revolutionary War with Britain began when the opening shots were fired at the Battle of Lexington. In 1776, the Founding Fathers signed and formally issued the Declaration on July 4th as the representatives of 13 colonies at the Second Continental Congress pronounced that the colonies were now independent and free from British rule. During the American Revolution, the thirteen former colonies, now called states, had to co-ordinate military campaigns against Britain and steer foreign affairs. The day after the Second Continental Congress formed a committee to write the Declaration of Independence, it authorized another committee to draft a document outlining a government for the thirteen states. Let s pause for a minute for another question. Who was the main author of the Declaration of Independence? Give yourself a pat Page 2 of 7

on the back if you answered Thomas Jefferson most of us are taught this beginning in grade school. Now a harder question. Who was the main author of the Articles of Confederation? The correct answer is John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Dickinson has unfortunately received second-billing when it comes to listing the main characters of 1776. A couple of other questions to consider: Who were the other members of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and who was the 1st person to sign the Declaration? Another important document was adopted at this time, the Articles of the Confederation. The Articles of Confederation were written by Dickinson and his committee within a year, but didn t formally get accepted by all the states until 1781; still, they served as the structure for the national government from 1777 to 1789. It was this document which gave our country its name. The Articles state, The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America. 1 The document gave much power to the individual states and rejected the notion of a strong national government. So how did the national government operate under the Articles of Confederation? First of all, there was no executive, that is, a president. Americans wanted nothing to do with a king-like figure or one individual who could wrest power from the people. There was also no national judiciary, that is, no national court system. If one state had a dispute with another state, Congress settled the matter. Congress consisted of only one chamber. Each state had a small delegation in Congress, but each state, no matter how large or small, had only one vote. The delegates to Congress were not elected by the people from the state, but by the state legislatures. Congress had sole power over declarations of war and foreign relations. But it lacked the most basic and strongest power of all governments the power to tax. In order to raise money, Congress could only ask the state governments for funds, and the states often balked at the requests. During the American Revolution, George Washington was continually frustrated by the lack of funds that Congress gave to the Continental Army. And Congress had no real authority over interstate or international trade. A dire warning was issued by the nation s Board of Treasury in 1786 which stated...nothing...can rescue us from Bankruptcy, or preserve the Union of the several States from Dissolution. It became increasingly clear to leaders like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton that a stronger national government was needed. The event that won some state leaders to Madison s view was Shays Rebellion in 1786. This anti-tax rebellion by farmers in Massachusetts, led by Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran was a threat to political stability in Massachusetts and to the entire region of New England. Leaders soon realized that a more powerful federal government was needed in order to prevent challenges such as this to the new nation. Consult your text and online sources for more details on the importance of this rebellion. By 1786 it became evident that the nation was on the brink of bankruptcy and the Articles of Confederation had serious flaws that needed to be corrected. Delegates from all states except for Rhode Island agreed to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation. Rhode Island boycotted the meeting because it was satisfied with the current Articles and feared the erosion of democracy if the central government was strengthened. A total of 55 delegates from the other twelve states attended the meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. The first order of business was to elect a leader to preside over the meeting; the delegates chose George Washington of Virginia. They also decided to deliberate in complete secrecy. They didn t want either the American Page 3 of 7

public or foreign nations to make political fodder out of their disagreements, their debates, and discussions. Fortunately, James Madison kept detailed notes during the Convention, so we have a historical record of the deliberations. Let s also look at who didn t attend the Constitutional Convention. Neither Thomas Jefferson nor John Adams were there, since Jefferson was serving as Ambassador to France and Adams as Ambassador to Britain. Ben Franklin did attend as a delegate from Pennsylvania and he was the oldest of the 55 delegate at age 81. 1 Mount, Steve. The Articles of Confederation. U.S. Constitution Online. http://www.usconstitution.net/articles.html Within a week, the delegates decided to scrap the Articles of Confederation and write a new document. A common misconception about the Constitution is that is a completely original document, written by its framers in an atmosphere of almost supernatural inspiration. Nothing could be further from the truth. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention had documents and models to work with. Each state had its own written constitution. The Framers of the national Constitution borrowed ideas like the separation of powers from the state constitution of Massachusetts. The Pennsylvania constitution was a model for open government, since it required all bills to be published for public discussion far in advance of debate in the legislature. Virginia s constitution contained a bill of rights that guaranteed trial by jury and due process of law, religious liberty, and the rights to life, liberty, and property. The framers of the U.S. Constitution pored over the state constitutions, the Articles of Confederation, and various reports and documents from the states. In other words, they did their research! James Madison of Virginia was the most well-read of the delegates in political theory and history. His support of a stronger central government and his role in inspiring discussion and debate during the Convention have earned him the title of Father of the U.S. Constitution. 2 There are two important themes to remember when studying the Constitutional Convention. First, the Framers agreed to create a republican form of government, not a democracy. Secondly, the U.S. Constitution is a document born of compromise. The reality of compromise in which the Constitution was hammered out means the final document was far from flawless, but it also cemented the idea of compromise at the national level into the American political experience. Let s return to the first notion of democracy. Democracy in the 1700s had some negative connotations. The word comes from the Greek demos, meaning people and kratos, meaning power; demokratia in Greek meant rule of the people. Madison and other delegates knew their history and realized that pure democracy could trample the rights of minorities and lead to mob rule, as it had done in ancient Athens on several occasions. The delegates realized that a republic, or representative democracy, was more suited to a large, growing nation like the United States. In this form of government representatives of the people are elected to serve the interests of their constituents, but also to act as a brake on the possibility of mob rule. The only part of the national government directly elected by the people under the new Constitution was the House of Representatives. The Framers decided to follow Massachusetts lead and adopt the idea dividing up powers between three branches of government a national legislature (i.e. Congress), an Page 4 of 7

executive (the President) and a national judiciary (the federal court system). They were adding two new branches to government on the national level. Neither the President nor federal judges were to be directly elected by the people. In the case of the President, the Framers established the Electoral College, an indirect means of selecting the chief executive. Federal judges were to be appointed by the president, with the consent of the U.S. Senate. And who would be in the U.S. Senate? The Framers decided to scrap the idea of a one-chamber Congress, which they had under the Articles of Confederation. Instead, the new Congress would consist of two houses the upper house, or Senate, would be made up of two senators from every state, regardless of size or population. But the state governments, not the people of the state, would select who served in the U.S. Senate. This indirect means of choosing U.S. Senators stayed in place until 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution allowed the people of states to directly elect their U.S. Senators. 2 Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/continental/defects.html The only part of the national government directly elected by the people under the new Constitution was the House of Representatives. The Framers decided to follow Massachusetts lead and adopt the idea dividing up powers between three branches of government a national legislature (i.e. Congress), an executive (the President) and a national judiciary (the federal court system). This idea of divided government and separation of powers can be traced back further to the writings of the Baron de Montesquieu and the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdome of Great Britain. The delegates, influenced by the ideas of The Enlightenment were adding two new branches to government on the national level. Neither the President nor federal judges were to be directly elected by the people. In the case of the President, the Framers established the Electoral College, an indirect means of selecting the chief executive. Federal judges were to be appointed by the president, with the consent of the U.S. Senate. And who would be in the U.S. Senate? The Framers decided to scrap the idea of a one-chamber Congress, which they had under the Articles of Confederation. Instead, the new Congress would consist of two houses the upper house, or Senate, would be made up of two senators from every state, regardless of size or population. But the state governments, not the people of the state, would select who served in the U.S. Senate. This indirect means of choosing U.S. Senators stayed in place until 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution allowed the people of states to directly elect their U.S. Senators. So we see that originally, the only body that was directly elected by the people under the new Constitution was the House of Representatives. Every state received a number of representatives to the House based on the population of the state more populous states received more representatives. The original Constitution left it up to the states to decide who was eligible to vote for their U.S. Representatives. In 1789, when the Constitution was ratified, most states allowed only white property owning men to vote; for instance, women were excluded from voting in every state except New Jersey. There, unmarried women who owned property were allowed to vote until 1809, when the New Jersey legislature closed the loophole and took away the right. Black men were outright excluded from voting in three states in 1789, and within a generation four other of the original thirteen states passed laws to exclude black voters. Property qualifications kept poor white and black men alike from voting in most Page 5 of 7

states. In the 1789 Election when George Washington became the first President, only 6% of the population of the U.S. voted. Most people would agree this is a far cry from mass democracy. These realities have led some Constitutional scholars like Robert Dahl of Yale University to point out that the Constitution contains a number of undemocratic features. The Framers had to deal with political realities they were creating a more powerful national government, but had to maintain some degree of sovereignty for the states; they were beholden to public opinion, especially that of landowning elites who were the movers and shakers in state and local circles. A new without these protections for state power would have been unlikely to receive enough support to pass. So the United States ended up with an indirect form of democracy, a republic, which gives small states, through the Electoral College and the Senate, power disproportionate to their populations. We ll look more closely at the Electoral College and the Senate in future lectures and discussion forums. Even though the Constitution has undemocratic features, the Framers provided four methods to amend the document. Several of the amendments correct the original flaws and expand democracy, however these corrections would come about much later in American history following many trials and tribulations. Ultimately, the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, respectively, gave black males and then women the right to vote. As mentioned before, the Seventeenth Amendment provides for the people to directly elect their U.S. Senators. Let s turn now to the second main feature of Constitutional Convention the fact that it produced a compromise document. The Framers quickly agreed to construct a republican form of government with a separation of powers between three branches a legislature, executive, and judiciary. On the other hand, disagreement and spirited debate arose during the Convention over three main issues: representation of states in Congress, slavery, and the structure and selection of the executive. Your text discusses these three areas of conflict in detail, so I won t repeat the essentials here. But I do want to comment on the debate over slavery at the Constitutional Convention, since that debate and its effects reverberate strongly throughout our nation s history. Nowhere in the Constitution is the word slavery mentioned. Slaves are referred to as persons held to labour or service or all other persons. Debate that arose over slavery in Philadelphia grew out of the debate over representation of states in Congress, not over the morality of slavery itself. The political reality was that southern delegates, who depended on slave labor, would not accept a Constitution which outlawed slavery. A number of delegates, like Washington and Madison, were slave-owners themselves. A prevailing view among them was that slavery was a harmful practice that they had inherited from colonial times. Some believed it was a dying institution which should and ultimately would be phased out over time by the individual states. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Slavery grew rapidly in the years after the Constitution was ratified, at least in part because of the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney and the increasing profitability of the slave system. Some Southerners, like delegate James Mason from Virginia, believed the slave trade; that is, the importation and selling of slaves, was the real problem. Mason s comments during the Constitutional Convention reflect these ideas. Mason, himself an owner of slaves, stated: This infernal trafic [sic] originated in the avarice of British Merchants. The British government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it. The present question concerns not the importing States alone but the whole Union. Slavery discourages arts & manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the Page 6 of 7

immigration of Whites, who really enrich & strengthen a Country. They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations cannot [sic] be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities [It is] essential in every point of view that the Genl. Govt. should have power to prevent the increase of slavery. 3 Mason was clearly torn over the issue of slavery. His comments reveal that he found slavery repulsive, yet at the time of his death in 1792, he owned 36 slaves and didn t free a single one of them in his will. As a result, Mason and the other delegates agreed that the international slave trade, or the importation of slaves to the United States from Africa and other regions, would be discontinued beginning in 1808. The debate over slavery, and the resulting compromises over this issue, would ultimately have a dramatic impact upon the American political system. First was the debate over whether or not the slave population would be counted in calculating representation in the national legislature, the House of Representatives. The number of representatives that each state would receive in the House of Representatives was based upon the total population of the state. Southern state representatives naturally wanted to count their slaves, while most northern delegates opposed counting slaves. The debate was settled with the adoption of the Three-Fifths Compromise. So, with this agreement the population of slaves would be counted as three-fifths in total population for the apportioning Representatives. In addition, this would be the standard for awarding Presidential electors and for tax purposes as well. The delegates at the Constitutional Convention basically wanted to establish a new system of government that would protect individual liberties and power at the state level, while at the same time enhance the power of the central government. They also wanted to provide a framework for government that would serve the nation well over the long term. The Constitution they created, while certainly not a perfect document, has survived the test of time. 3 George Mason s Views on Slavery. Gunston Hall. http://www.gunstonhall.org/georgemason/slavery/views_on_slavery.html Rue Wood, Bruce Dickerson, and Indian Hills Community College Page 7 of 7