| The Convention | The convention was
scheduled to begin on May 14, but did not achieve a
quorum of delegations from more than half the states until May 25.
Eventually there were 12 delegations. Rhode Island boycotted the
convention. On May 25, 1787, delegates from seven states had arrived. A quorum had been achieved and the convention could begin. The delegates, 55 in all, but never more than 30 or 35 at once, sealed themselves inside a room no bigger than a large schoolroom in Philadelphia's state House. They posted sentries at the doors and windows to keep their "secrets from flying out." They barred the press and public, and took a vow not to reveal to anyone the words spoken. With the doors and windows closed, the little room where the convention met for up to six hours a day, was stiflingly hot. There were speeches that lasted two, three or four hours. The convention took a single break, for 11 days. Over four months, the delegates hammered out compromises that established a system flexible to withstand more than two centuries of change. The delegates' goals were contradictory: to strengthen the national government and to limit its power. On many issues, there was deep division. The convention flip-flopped five times on whether the president should be eligible for reelection. When truly stymied, the convention would appoint a committee to come up with a solution and present it to the full convention. |
| Republicanism | When asked what kind of
government the Constitutional Convention had
created, Benjamin Franklin replied: "A republic, if you can keep it."
Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution contains an unamendable
provision that begins: "The United States shall guarantee to every
state in this Union a republican form of government." Today the word "republican" refers to one of the United States' two major political parties. In the late 18th century, the word referred to the principles and practices appropriate to a government in which ultimate authority resides in the people and in which elected officials and representatives are responsible to the people and must govern according to the law. But republicanism involved more than eliminating a king and instituting a representative government. It also involved a critique of monarchical society: A republican society was to be a society free of the corruptions, pretensions, and rigid class stratification found in Europe. Monarchical societies maintained their authority through hereditary privilege, patronage, standing armies, and a religious establishment. A truly republican society, in contrast, depended on the independence and the moral virtue of its citizens. At the time of the American Revolution, the only republics in the world were tiny: the city-states of Italy and Switzerland and the Netherlands. Larger republics, like England during the mid-17th century, had collapsed into dictatorship. One of the James Madison's goals in devising the U.S. Constitution was to create a republic that would endure despite its large size and that would not have to depend entirely on the virtue of the country's leaders. In the Federalist Papers, he argued that in a large republic, diverse and conflicting interests would balance and neutralize each other. The objective of the Constitution was to create a system of government that would control men's lust for power and safeguard individual liberty. To prevent concentrations of power, the framers established a system of checks and balances. Authority was divided between the federal and state governments and was further divided among the three branches of the federal government. The framers of the Constitution hoped to weaken the basis of monarchical society. They wanted to eliminate the forms of corruption, such as nepotism and the holding of multiple public offices, that characterized the British government. |
| Drafting the Constitution | For nearly four months
during a hot, muggy Philadelphia summer, the delegates debated thorny
issues:* Should the national government be allowed to veto state laws; Framing the debate was a plan introduced by Edmund Randolph, the governor of Virginia, but actually written by James Madison. The Virginia Plan proposed a national legislature divided into two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. * Individual voters, not state governments, would elect members of the House of Representatives. Delegates from small states protested that the Virginia Plan would give larger states too much power in the national government. New Jersey proposed that all states have an equal number of representatives. Under the New Jersey Plan, Congress would consist of only one house, to be elected by the state legislatures, not the people. The New Jersey Plan received support from Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. The Maryland delegation split. Several of Madison's proposals were defeated. The delegates eliminated a congressional veto over state legislation. They also abandoned his notion of apportioning representation in both houses of the legislature on the basis of population. |
| Compromises | The Constitution
represented compromises, some of which succeeded
brilliantly and others that left an enormous burden to the generations
that followed. Over the course of the debates, the delegates reached agreement on certain fundamental principles. They achieved a consensus that in a republican government power should be divided among three separate branches - legislative, executive, and judicial, a principle enshrined in most state constitutions. They also agreed that: * the central government should have direct power to tax; They rejected Benjamin Franklin's suggestion that public servants should receive no salary. They also rejected a proposal for an executive branch composed of three persons. One year terms for members of the House were voted down out of concern that members would spend all their time traveling. Three year terms were rejected for fear members would lose touch with their constituencies. The discussion on the length of term for the present proved difficult to resolve. Proposals ranged form three years to 20 years. To insure that the poorer states could not tax the richer states, the Constitution provided that the House of Representatives had exclusive authority to originate bills raising revenue. |
| Completing a Final Draft | In late July
1787, a five member Committee of Detail was given the task
of arranging and organizing the Constitution and choosing its
wording.
The members of the committee were James Wilson from Pennsylvania; John
Rutledge of South Carolina, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, Oliver
Ellsworth of Connecticut, and Edmund Randolph of Virginia. The committee decided that the Constitution would contain "essential principles only; lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable which ought to be accommodated to times and events." The members vowed to use "simple and precise language" and "general propositions" rather than intricate detail. The committee first prepared an outline, consolidating the convention's decisions by category: the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary. It gave the names to the institutions of government: the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the President of the United States. It listed the powers of each branch and qualifications for office. The committee enumerated 18 powers for Congress, from the power to tax to the power to regulate commerce and make war. The 18th power, known as the "elastic clause," gave Congress the authority "to make all laws that shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States." The committee members also included a "supremacy clause," which made federal law supreme to "anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." When the committee had completed its assignment, the Convention reopened debate, and made dozens of changes throughout the draft Constitution. * To decrease presidential power, the convention reduced the vote required to override a presidential veto from three-fourths of each house to two thirds; The power to appoint judges and ambassadors and to negotiate treaties with foreign powers was in the hands of the Senate until the last weeks of the convention. Then the convention decided that the president would nominate judges and ambassadors and the Senate would have to confirm them. The executive branch would negotiate treaties, with the advice and consent of the Senate. In an effort to generate support for the new plan of government, Benjamin Franklin said: I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve.... [But] the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.... I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. Although a number of individual delegates refused to sign the Constitution, all the state delegations voted for the final draft. While they were signing, Franklin commented about the chair on the dias in which the Convention president had sat. Franklin said he had been studying the chair, which had a sun painted on the headrest. He had often looked at the sun ""without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun." |
| Source: Digital History, "The
U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights" |
© Kahne Parsons 2008-09