Miracle At Philadelphia

“Yet in spite of the General’s almost glacial reserve and dignity, one sensed that he would never be overbearing, power would never turn his head. One knew it by the troubled lines in his brow, a quality of melancholy when his face was in repose.”

Even in his own time, George Washington was a legendary figure, the victorious general who then ceded power to a civilian government to return to private life. Very tall for his era and with a statuesque bearing, Washington could establish the tone of a room without even speaking, and clearly this is what the Convention was hoping for by having him preside over its deliberations. Despite the fierce disagreements among them, each delegate was technically addressing Washington, and so had to uphold the spirit of unity that Washington embodied.

“There is something impressive about these rules. They show determination; the Convention was to be formal and parliamentary and behave as an authorized assembly. Moreover, a group of less experienced men would not have dared to be so simple, or would not have known how to free themselves from small and hampering considerations, leaving room for delegates to differ and change their minds. Reading the rules, one sees here a group of reasonable men, strong enough to yield.”

Before turning to any of the substantive issues that would take up the bulk of debate, the Convention settled the rules of day-to-day procedure. Anticipating the likely conflicts that would emerge, the insistence on decorum, limiting the number of times someone could speak on a single issue, and directing all speech toward the chair (usually Washington) helped bring a sense of cordiality to the proceedings, even when the delegates were at their most hostile toward one another.

“To the members of the Federal Convention the word democracy carried another meaning than it does today. Democracy signified anarchy; demos was not the people but the mob. When Paterson of New Jersey said ‘the democratic spirit beats high,’ it was meant in derogation, not praise. Again and again we meet these phrases; if aristocracy was ‘baleful’ and ‘baneful,’ unchecked democracy was equally to be shunned. Edmund Randolph desired, he said, ‘to restrain the fury of democracy,’ and spoke also of ‘the democratic licentiousness of the state legislatures.’”

Now that representative, constitutional governments are much more common in world politics, they have become associated with the word “democracy,” but in the time of the Convention, democracy referred to the direct rule by the citizenry, as in ancient Athens. The ancient examples of democracy were filled with instability, as the principle of majority rule often gave way to the reality of factional strife. Thus one of the major questions in the Convention was how to incorporate the will of the people into government, while also avoiding the dangers associated with direct popular rule.

“It has been said that revolutions, like utopias, believe they can manage better without courts. Shakespeare knew it: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers!’ cries one of Jack Cade’s rebels […] a beautiful anarchy, the courts closed, the prisons emptied, the rich brought low and no bailiffs knocking at the door with summonses.”

The Revolution was in large part a break from British ways, and so there was often resistance when the development of new American modes and orders relied on the British example. A salient example of this was the so-called common law, legal traditions dating from medieval Britain, which had already shaped the legal culture of the colonies. Maintaining a common legal standard was thus doubly offensive to some in that it required a federal government as a final authority, which in turn relied heavily on the British example in its understanding of law and legal procedure.

“The Continental Congress, composing its first Declaration and Resolves (1774), had said the colonists were entitled to ‘life, liberty, and property.’ In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson altered it to read, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ If nobody knew exactly what he meant, they did not need to know. They felt it, breathed it in the Revolutionary air. To pursue happiness signified that a man could rise in the world according to his abilities and his industry.”

Jefferson’s formulation in the Declaration has become the more famous, but he was not merely quoting an original source. The Declaration and Resolves was in fact quoting John Locke’s Second Treatise, which identified property as the third (and arguably most important) natural right enjoyed by all human beings. While Bowen is careful not to assign overly self-interested motives to the delegates, she recognizes that for them property was an essential aspect of liberty, which is why those without property had fewer rights in the early American republic.

“Even Elbridge Gerry, cautious, shrewd, narrow in his views, reminded the Convention that ‘something must be done or we shall disappoint not only America but the whole world.’ Strange words for propertied gentlemen, intent, as some historians have hinted, only on commerce and their own financial security.”

Bowen is implicitly responding to the work of historians such as Charles Beard, who in his 1913 book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, argued that the Founders were motivated principally by the prospect of self-enrichment. A major part of Bowen’s task, as the title of her work indicates, is to restore a sense of awe at what the Convention was able to accomplish under enormous pressure, rather than see it as a conspiracy of the rich to rig the game of American politics in their favor.

“‘Mr. Sharman [sic] proposed that the proportion of suffrage in the 1st branch [the House] should be according to the respective number of free inhabitants, and that in the second branch or Senate, each state should have one more and no more.’ It would be a month before the Convention came round to this solution, which was to go down in history as the Connecticut, the Great, or the Sherman Compromise […] ‘When a great question is first started,’ John Adams once had said, ‘there are very few, even of the greatest minds, which suddenly and instinctively comprehend it in all its consequences.’”

Roger Sherman’s “Connecticut Compromise” was one of the major breakthroughs of the Convention, helping to resolve one of the thorniest issues of the proceedings. The fact that it took so long for the same idea to become accepted, even though he had proposed it several times, speaks to the evolving politics of the Convention itself. In the initial period, the various sides were further apart from one another because the basic nature of the system was still in doubt. Once it became evident that a new national government was being formed, leaving the states’-rights advocates to fight for the best possible position, they proved willing to accept what had earlier seemed unacceptable.

“Alexander Hamilton at the Federal Convention cuts a disappointing figure, at odds with his previous and subsequent magnificent performance in support of the constitution. His long speech—a day’s work—was out of tune, unacceptable to both sides […] perhaps he deliberately outlined to the Convention a system of government so ‘national,’ so ‘consolidated,’ that it would make the Virginia Plan look tame and the New Jersey Plan impossible.”

Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in the Constitutional Convention happening in the first place, and he was the main voice of “Publius” in The Federalist Papers urging ratification to the people of New York. Hamilton’s middle act, however, was to give a long speech that horrified the skeptics of the Constitution and humiliated its advocates. It was a major political error that would haunt the rest of his political career, with even members of his Federalist Party seeing him as an untrustworthy monarchist.

“Present-day readers may be a trifle dashed to find the Father of our Constitution urging, in effect, that the American rich put up barriers against the American poor, who with power in their hands could be dangerous. By symptoms of a leveling spirit, Madison meant riots and rowdyism under Pennsylvania’s popular government, the recent unrest in Maryland, the agrarian paper-money troubles of Rhode Island, and of course Shays’ Rebellion. Yet it is unfair to make judgment in terms of today.”

As much as Bowen wants to avoid giving the impression of the Founders as aristocrats preserving their own privileges, it is hard to escape their frequent use of language that apparently denigrates the common people. As Bowen points out, it was not so much the people as it was the politics of the mob that drew their ire. The ancient republics had demonstrated the danger of mob politics, which remained a real concern in the Founders’ own day. Contemporary Americans live with the many safeguards established against such dangers that they tend to forget that the threat once existed, and that the potential remains for their reemergence.

“Bedford’s outburst had forced into the open an issue that was at the back of everyone’s mind: the dangers of foreign intervention and foreign bribes, though until today no state had used it as a threat against her sisters in the Convention. Alexander Hamilton had earlier remarked that ‘the weak side of republican government is the danger of foreign influence.’ And on the next day (June nineteenth) Madison had demanded whether the New Jersey Plan would ‘secure the Union against the influence of foreign powers over its numbers.’ Europe was a fact of life. The states could not rid themselves of it merely by damning monarchical or aristocratic systems and praising their own.”

Bedford’s warning that Delaware would seek out foreign assistance before submitting to the rule of the large states rocked the Convention. If Hamilton’s advocacy for a lifetime president and senate was extreme, at least it remained implausible, but the threat of foreign intervention was all too real. Bedford’s reckless words prompted the delegates to form a system that invalidated such threats.

“The friends of America were by no means numerous in Europe but they were vocal and enjoyed their defiance […] That Europe did not ‘understand’ us was clear to every American who went abroad. Yet it was clear also that certain circles looked to us with hope and good faith, equating their own revolutionary plans with the success of our experiment. These men studied our new state constitutions and watched with eager interest for the national constitution which they heard was to be published in the near future.”

In 1787, the French Revolution was only two years away. Tensions had been simmering for years, and so Europe, especially France, looked with intense interest on the evolving situation in the United States. They may not have understood all the regional differences and nuances of State Versus Federal Power, but the formation of a republic on such a large scale was an experiment without precedent in modern history, and Europe had a vested interest in its success or failure.

“It was John Adams who made the truest observation […] ‘the mechanic arts are those which we have occasion for in a young country as yet simple and not far advanced in luxury. I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.’”

European observers at the time often characterized the Americans as practical yet crude, highly effective in industry and yet lacking in fine art. In this quotation, John Adams acknowledges this American tendency and chalks it up to the newness of the nation, which must first establish itself in the harsh world of power politics before it can attend to matters of beauty and art.

“Had a young state, west of the mountains, a right to the same number of representatives in Congress as the original states? And would not such equality prove a dangerous policy, a swamping of older, experienced government councils by a horde of wild men in fringed leggings, uncouth, untutored, uncivil altogether? Ironically, the Atlantic states looked on their vast western frontier as Britain once had looked on the American colonies—with paternal suspicion of her own alien young.”

A major impetus for the Revolutionary War was settlers’ desire to access the Western territories, which the British had been preventing. Once they gained independence and access to those lands, the United States become a colonial power and therefore replicated many of the relationships it had had with Britain.

“The small states were jubilant over the compromise; the large states, alarmed, tried to reorganize, recover their position […] but it was hopeless, the large states were beaten; after July seventeenth they let the question die. From now on matters would move more easily; the little states were readier to meet the big, and willing to yield on many questions.”

Achieving equal representation in the Senate was a major win for the small states, whose opponents had offered fierce resistance to such plans for most of the Convention. But in achieving that victory, they ceded the broader question of federal power, and showed the delegates from the large states that the worst was over and that their most dire fears—the breakup of the Convention—would go unrealized. It proved much easier for small states to accept the principle of a federal system with the assurance of Senate equality.

“Hamilton would later say that without the federal ratio ‘no union could have possibly been formed.’ It was true, and true also that the Constitution could not have gone through without the slavery compromise. The question before the Convention was not, shall slavery be abolished? It was rather, who shall have power to control it—the states or the national government? As the Constitution now stood, Congress could control the traffic in slaves exactly as it controlled all other trade and commerce.”

It is a great historical irony that the first modern republic preserved an astonishingly brutal system of slavery. It is clear that the Constitution could not have been ratified without appeasing the interests of the southern states, but the moral and political consequences were no less severe for the delegates bowing to the political realities of the moment. By failing to address the question of slavery, they buried it until it reemerged in the Civil War, which would also require a major reworking of the original Constitution.

“Edmund Randolph was not sure whether foreigners were useful to us or not. But he would never agree to disable them from office for a period of fourteen years. Remember, cautioned Randolph, the language of our patriots during the Revolution and the principles laid down in our state constitutions. Under the faith of these invitations many foreigners may have come here and fixed their fortunes among us.”

America of 1787 was not quite the “nation of immigrants” that it would later become, but foreigners had played an important role from the first moments of its independence. Eager to define the prerogatives of a young nation, many delegates wanted to sharpen the distinction between Americans and non-Americans, but they also understood that their nation represented an ideal that would resonate with peoples all over the world. The United States has sought out various ways to reconcile those two realities since the nation first came into being.

“It was the old bugbear. A tyrant, a Cromwell would arise… Gerry trotted out the timeworn arguments against a standing army; all summer he had used them: the people were jealous on this head, and if the new plan permitted it, great opposition would be raised.”

Bowen is never particularly fond of fierce anti-Constitutionalists such as Massachusetts’ Gerry and Maryland’s Martin, but here she is on the brink of exasperation—the ellipses are original to the text, signaling her impatience with arguments she believes have been trotted out to the point of tedium. It is true that Gerry and his fellow skeptics tended to see the danger of tyranny everywhere, but such concerns do seem relevant with respect to a standing army. While Congress would hold the power to raise armies, and a professional army did form, it was not until after the Second World War that the United States developed a military capable of mobilizing at any given moment.

“When a nation is ill-ruled, men must have recourse to a higher law, a law above kings, princes and parliaments. But in the Federal Convention, Wilson avoided the phrase ‘law of nature,’ preferring ‘the original powers of society.’ Immediately, Pierce Butler came out for ratification by nine states; he ‘revolted at the idea that one or two states should restrain the others from consulting their safety.’”

As the question of ratification approached, the two sides found themselves in a paradox. Earlier debates on treason and a standing army placed the Constitutionalists on the side of the federal authority, while skeptics urged a right of revolution as a hallmark of the emergent American character. Yet the actual establishment of that authority would likely require circumventing the current order of the Articles of Confederation, and so the Constitutionalists were now challenging the law while the skeptics stuck to its precise letters.

“The seven verbs rolled out: to form, establish, insure, provide, promote, secure, ordain. One might challenge the centuries to better these verbs […] Morris was setting down a working instrument of government which must be plain, brief and strategically a trifle vague in places, to give play for future circumstance.”

After the Convention had rejected the prospect of a preamble to the Constitution, the Committee of Style decided there would in fact be a preamble, with Gouverneur Morris taking main responsibility for its composition. The result is a rare example of stirring words in an otherwise dry and legal document, with its proclamation of “we the people” galvanizing states’-rights advocates. It is one of the most salient examples of how the details left to the Committee of Style ended up having as much impact on the issues debated on the floor of the Convention.

“‘We the People of the United States…’ Hamilton quoted the preamble—a firmer recognition of popular rights, he said, than volumes of these aphorisms appearing in the state bills of rights, which ‘would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government.’ And while at it, why not declare in the Constitution that government ought to be free, that taxes ought not to be excessive, and so on?”

To a contemporary audience, the opposition of Hamilton and others to a Bill of Rights may seem like a major error, and perhaps it was, but it was not because they objected to the kinds of rights that would eventually be included (such as trial by jury). Bills of Rights were explicit lists of actions forbidden to governments, and for Hamilton, this implied that the government was prone to tyranny. He hoped that confidence in the government would grow in the expectation that it would respect the rights of its citizens without requiring injunctions against specific actions.”

“‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who still may have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little bit of his own infallibility—and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.’”

Benjamin Franklin’s contribution to the Convention was modest, as the octogenarian was in poor health and his ideas found little purchase among his fellow delegates. What he did bring was considerable prestige, and he leveraged it at the moment it was most needed to urge the delegates to put aside their reservations and accept the Constitution as drafted. Not everyone accepted his advice, and some even resented the idea of keeping silent on what they believed to be issues of fundamental importance, but there can be little doubt that Franklin helped push the Constitution over the finish line with the right speech at the right moment.

“The Antifederalists at this early stage were thought to have numbers on their side almost overwhelmingly. Citizens who had never seen the Constitution or never heard it discussed could not veery well be Constitutionalists, and that included a large part of the country.”

While Bowen does not think very highly of Anti-Federalist arguments, she does acknowledge that for many citizens, the introduction of a new document whose composition they had had no part in devising could be quite a shock. She still blames leaders for exploiting fear and uncertainty rather than educating them in their long-term interests, but given how insular the Convention was by design, it can hardly be surprising that some citizens resented being deprived of political power.

“Brother farmers, let us suppose a case, now: Suppose you had a farm of fifty aces, and your title was disputed, and there was a farm of five thousand acres joined to you, that belonged to a man of learning, and his title was involved in the same difficulty. Would you not be glad to have him for a friend, rather than stand alone in the dispute? Well, the case is the same. These lawyers, these moneyed men of learning, are all embarked in the same cause with us, and we must all swim or sink together.”

This passage, featuring a quote from a speech by Massachusetts delegate Jonathan Smith, elegantly makes the right case to the right audience. Farmers in towns like Worcester were traditionally rivals to coastal cities like Boston and Plymouth, and the latter’s support for the Constitution was in many cases enough to ensure the former’s opposition, even before they read the text. Smith’s appeal to the immediate conditions of their lives and a common-sense approach to a solution did not sway everyone, but it did provide enough clarity to get a difficult state over the hump to ratification.