The Constitutional Convention: May 25 - September 17, 1787

EXULT, each patriot heart!--this night is shewn
A piece, which we may fairly call our own;
Where the proud titles of "My Lord! Your Grace!"
To humble Mr. and plain Sir give place...
On native themes his Muse displays her pow'rs;
If ours the faults, the virtues too are ours.
Why should our thoughts to distant countries roam,
When each refinement may be found at home?

From the Prologue to The Contrast, A Comedy
By Royall Tyler

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Compromise has accompanied every great political assembly with mixed results. The consensus of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 brought forth a balanced system of government that had been sought after by Americans throughout the War for Independence. What distinguishes the compromises in the Constitutional Convention from other political compromises was that separate factions dividing the Convention were often on opposite and similarly harmful extremes. During the Convention, the surest way of avoiding these extremes was achieving a golden mean, and working out a system that nullified the problems of all extremes.

One thing was simple, the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation could no longer pretend to be what everyone fantasized it was. Woeful was its only undisguised adjective. During the War for Independence, the Congress had little power to tax the states to fund Washington's army, which only aggravated conditions at Valley Forge. This may have been very well for the respective states, but the army would not tolerate it. In the years following Yorktown before the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Continental army generals formed a conspiracy to march on the Continental Congress, build a government by force that could tax the states, and crown George Washington king of the United States (Washington had now retired and was living at Mount Vernon). Had not Washington chosen to ride on March 15th (the Ides of March) from Mount Vernon to the army headquarters and nip the plot in the bud, the American War for Independence would have ended much like the English Civil War, with a New Model Army riding its military hero to political power. Rebellion was in the air. In 1876, Daniel Shays led a miniature rebellion to protest inflation caused in part by Continental dollars. Inflation was so bad that certain areas sold one pound of tea for $100. According to a letter from George Washington to John Jay signed August 15, 1786, the United States under the Continental Congress had already violated some provisions of the Treaty of Paris. Washington takes note of the many dangers:

Your sentiments, that our affairs are drawing rapidly to a crisis, accord with my own. What the event will be is also beyond the reach of my foresight. We have errors to correct. We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation... To be fearful of vesting Congress, constituted as that body is, with ample authorities for national purposes, appears to me the very climax of popular absurdity and madness. Could Congress exert them for the detriment of the public without injuring themselves in an equal or greater proportion? Are not their interests inseperably connected with those of their constituents? By the rotation of appointment must they not mingle frequently with the mass of citizens? Is it not rather to be apprehended, if they were possessed of the powers before described, that the individual members would be induced to use them, on many occasions, very timidly & inefficatiously for fear of loosing their popularity & future election? We must take human nature as we find it... I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror.

When it came to giving Congress more power, James Madison was ever ready to protrude from his lair of big government ideas. "Let it be tried then," Madison claimed, "whether any middle ground can be taken which will at once support a due supremacy of the national authority," giving states power when only "subordinately useful." This was no middle ground, and Madison ought to have known it. Madison and John Tyler proposed that the Congress be given power to regulate commerce between all 13 states, and a meeting was called in Annapolis, MD to debate the problems in September 1786. At the meeting, Madison and Alexander Hamilton suddenly moved to call another convention to revise the entire Articles of Confederation. They were moving too fast for the nation, but the Congress had no other real answers to avoid its debts. It called for a convention. However, much of the intellectual grace that went into the Declaration of Independence and other American founding documents was not present for this Convention on May 25, 1787. Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, serving abroad, were compelled to watch from afar the happenings of the new nation, and John Jay was too preoccupied with the Foreign Office in New York to attend. The electrifying Patrick Henry was completely opposed to the Convention saying he "smelt a rat," as he feared that a strong national government would lift state protection of individual rights, while Jefferson lamented to Adams that, "I am sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members." Even though the elderly Benjamin Franklin was able to attend, Madison had only one real option of uplifting the Convention's reputation, getting George Washington. Madison's wish came true when Washington was unanimously voted and accepted the position of president of the Convention.

At the start of the Convention, Madison and his fellow Virginians began pushing for the grand Virginia plan. On May 29th, Edmund Randolph brought the plan to the floor. This had been what Madison was planning for years; a government with three separate branches that checked each other (legislative, judicial, and executive) and veto power over all state legislatures. Randolph honestly described it as "a strong consolidated union in which the idea of states should be nearly annihilated." The Virginians were arguing on their own turf, and had a structural advantage. On July 13th, William Paterson feebly countered with his New Jersey plan. He envisioned a "union of the States merely federal" with power to regulate commerce, enforce treaties as "supreme law," and equal representation of all states to Congress. The catch was equal state representation. Advocates of the Virginia plan saw that such a position would not allow for greater representation in their favor against smaller states. Accordingly, the New Jersey resolutions were voted down. Moving into the gap, Madison and his allies also successfully pushed that the Virgina plan would be voted on by the people instead of the states, because they knew that state legislatures would be more leery about giving up state power than common Americans would. Bypassing the states altogether would negate every incentive to maintain state power. It seemed that the Virginians had this Convention in the bag.

Meanwhile, Hamilton began to disturb the political status quo. Hamilton proposed his own plan on June 18th, in which he called British government "the best in the world," and outlined a government in which the legislature could make "all laws whatsoever," and the senate and executive would serve for life or during good behavior. Hinting at the English tradition, he claimed the people were ready for "something not very remote from that which they have lately quitted." North Carolinian delegate Hugh Williamson was not deceived when he said it was "pretty certain . . . that we should at some time or other have a king." Hamilton's proposal convinced very few, but did add another faction to the debate.

As June drew to a close, the Convention was hopelessly polarizing without middle ground, and getting nowhere. Rebuking the Convention for its negligence, Franklin asked for prayer, "How has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly appealing to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of the truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men" (Foster 16-17). With the Convention now equally tied over state representation, it almost fell apart, and on July 10th Washington regretted "having had any agency" with the entire proceedings.

Providentially, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman stepped in. Ellsworth suggested on July 12th that lower house representation be based on population, with taxation being also based on population, and the senate being equally represented among states. This seemed the only option, and the delegates found a common ground. After an adjournment, the delegates agreed to a first Constitutional draft. However, slavery split the Convention once again, this time along North and South boundaries. Giving a congress the power to regulate trade inevitably linked economics with slavery. Southerners feared Luther Martin's proposal to tax slave importation. Sherman once again stepped in. He created a compromise in which Congress would not touch the issue of slavery for another twenty years, and that Southerners would allow Congress to only need a simple majority vote to pass navigation laws. The side effect of not dealing with the moral problem of slavery began a race in Congress for representation between Northerners and Southerners. This race would bring America to a dreadful war not even one hundred years later.

By September 17th the debating was over. The Convention had added an electoral college, granting large state population representation, allowing state legislatures to chose delegates, and Congress the power to chose the president in the absence of a majority vote for a candidate. The new Constitution now displayed the brilliance of refinement from different factions. It was truly no one person's document, and revealed the balances so important to most every delegate. After September 17th, it was sent on to the states for ratification.

Sources:
Image of Signing of the Constitution from Wikipedia
http://www.jmu.edu/madison/gpos225-madison2/adopt.htm
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/constitution/1784/jay2.html
http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/classic_books_online/tcntr10.htm
http://www.usconstitution.net/plan_nj.html
Foster, Marshall. The American Covenant: The Untold Story. The Mayflower Institute: Thousand Oaks, 1992. Print.