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Constitutional Convention

The Philadelphia Convention of 1787 (also known as the Federal Convention or the Constitutional Convention) was a landmark in American and world history. Both its handiwork, the Constitution of the United States, and its example of a people's representatives using reason and experience to decide how to govern themselves had profound influence on subsequent experiments in government.

The convention met in the State House (now called Independence Hall) in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787. Fifty-five delegates from twelve of the thirteen states (Rhode Island did not send delegates) took part in its deliberations.

The convention was the result of a campaign to reform the first charter of government of the United States, the Articles of Confederation. Throughout the 1780s, politicians who thought in national terms worried that the Confederation faced problems its government was too weak to solve. Former allies, such as France and Spain, and its former adversary, Great Britain, restricted trade with the new nation and hampered America's development of its western territories. The Confederation Congress lacked the power to resolve boundary disputes between the states, to prevent states from imposing tariffs and other restrictions on interstate commerce, or to compel the states to meet requisitions issued to finance the Confederation. The Confederation even lacked an independent source of revenue, and plans in 1781 and 1783 to grant Congress authority to levy a 5 percent tax on imports had failed. Because all thirteen states had to ratify amendments, one state's refusal could block any attempt to amend the Articles.

Advocates of reform exchanged correspondence to muster support for a convention to revise the Articles, laying the foundation for interstate conferences and conventions seeking similar goals. In 1785, delegates from Maryland and Virginia, meeting in the Mount Vernon Conference, set a precedent for interstate conferences on reform. In 1786, hoping to extend this success, some proposed that the states meet in a convention on commercial matters at Annapolis, Maryland. Twelve delegates from five states gathered there in September; their report, written by Alexander Hamilton of New York, urging a general convention spurred the calling of the Federal Convention.

On February 21, 1787, the Confederation Congress adopted a resolution authorizing the convention but limited its mandate to revision of the Articles. Several states already had named their delegates and, citing the Annapolis Convention's report, authorized them to take any measures "to render the constitution of government adequate to the exigencies of the Union." The convention thus began with an inconsistent mandate.

The convention consisted of states' governors, chief justices, attorneys general, and many delegates to the Confederation Congress, as well as several distinguished Americans who had agreed to come out of retirement to participate one last time in American politics. Although they followed a wide range of callings--lawyers, physicians, soldiers, clergymen, merchants, and farmers--most of the delegates were well-to-do members of their states' elite; one historian called them the well-bred, well-fed, well-wed, and well-read. They fell into several groups:

1. National political figures: Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and George Washington of Virginia composed this group. Their willingness to place their prestige at risk by attending the convention testified to its legitimacy and to the severity of the problems facing the United States.

2. Senior statesmen of American politics: John Dickinson of Delaware, William Livingston of New Jersey, George Mason of Virginia, John Rutledge of South Carolina, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut were among these men. Veterans of colonial politics, they had helped lead the struggle against Great Britain. They brought with them an ability to compromise and a sensitivity to the clashing interests of the several states.

3. Advocates of state and local interests: These included John Lansing, Jr., of New York, Luther Martin of Maryland, William Paterson of New Jersey, Charles C. Pinckney of South Carolina, and Robert Yates, Jr., of New York. Because they spoke for particular interests, they made it necessary at least to consider localist views and interests in framing the new charter of government.

4. Architects of national government: Alexander Hamilton of New York, James Madison of Virginia, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania formed this group. Each of these men hoped to make his ideas the basis of the convention's deliberations.

5. Quiet men: Among these were John Blair of Virginia, Jacob Broome of Delaware, Jared Ingersoll of Pennsylvania, and James McHenry of Maryland. They provided the votes needed to build consensus and to establish grounds for compromise.

Some leading figures were not present: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the American ministers to London and Paris, John Jay was the Confederation's secretary for foreign affairs in New York City, and Patrick Henry was too interested in Virginia politics.

The convention elected Washington as its president and appointed a committee to prepare rules. Two of these were vital to the convention's success. First, as was customary among legislatures in the Anglo-American world, the convention met in secret, which would permit full and free discussion. Second, the delegates were free to change their minds and reopen any matters for further debate.

The delegates rotated between sessions in full convention and meetings of the Committee of the Whole House, the latter a useful parliamentary procedure permitting informal debate, freedom in stating views, and flexibility in reaching and reconsidering decisions. Select committees worked out compromises, prepared drafts, or formulated a range of solutions to a given problem. The delegates attacked questions piecemeal, debating and deciding on individual aspects. Often a decision on one issue would require them to reconsider other decisions they had reached. They traced a tortuous, crisscrossing route, at times pausing in dismay as they realized that a vote they had just taken had undone the accomplishments of hours or even days of grueling debate.

The convention discarded the Articles and framed an entirely new constitution. They based their work on a set of resolutions known as the Virginia Plan, largely the work of James Madison. These resolutions proposed the creation of a supreme national government with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

The convention's principal task was the design of the national legislature. The delegates agreed on the powers they wished to lodge in the new Congress, but disagreed about how the states and the American people would be represented in it. Under the Virginia Plan, population or some other proportional measure would determine representation in both houses of Congress. To protect the principle of state equality, small-state delegates rallied behind William Paterson's New Jersey Plan, which would have preserved each state's equal vote in a one-house Congress with augmented powers. Although the delegates rejected the New Jersey Plan on June 19, it took them nearly a month of further argument before they adopted on July 16 what has been called the Great Compromise, under which the House of Representatives would be apportioned based on population and each state would have two votes in the Senate.

Other difficulties facing them included the method of electing the chief executive, or president--solved by the invention of the electoral college; the counting of slaves in the ratio for apportioning representation and taxation among the states--resolved with the "three-fifths" ratio, under which three-fifths of the slave population would be added to the free population; and the dispute over the need for a bill of rights, a proposal rejected by the convention in its last week. But the delegates devoted little attention to the powers of the president and almost none to the structure of the judiciary or the executive branch, leaving these matters to the new Congress.

The document approved on September 17, the Constitution of the United States, was a terse outline of government--seven articles of four thousand words. In framing it, the delegates drew on their accumulated experience and memories of colonial, state, and national politics, their familiarity with English constitutional history and classical civilization, and the political ideas of the Age of Enlightenment. Thirty-nine delegates signed the Constitution; the convention sent it to the Confederation Congress for submission to the states, which were to refer it in turn to ratifying conventions chosen by the people.

James Madison took detailed notes of the convention's debates to educate future generations about the difficulties and challenges of constitution making. Together with convention documents, the notes kept by Madison, John Lansing, Jr., Robert Yates, James McHenry, and other delegates form the basis for the modern understanding of the convention's work. Although these documents had little influence on the workings of the Constitution in its first decades, modern constitutional lawyers use them in preparing arguments about the "original intent" of the Framers.

Bibliography:

Richard B. Bernstein with Kym S. Rice, Are We to Be a Nation? The Making of the Constitution (1987); Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (1911; rev. ed., 4 vols., 1937; supplement, ed., James H. Hutson, 1987); Clinton L. Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention (1966).

Author:

Richard B. Bernstein