Page 181 - American Stories, A History of the United States

rule saved “both the convention and the community from a thousand erroneous and
6.1 perhaps mischievous reports.” It also has made it difficult for modern lawyers and
Quick Check judges to determine what the delegates had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.
Why were the men who drafted Second, the delegates decided to vote by state. But to avoid the problems that had
6.2 the constitution so concerned with plagued the Confederation, key proposals needed the support of only a majority of the
secrecy?
states instead of the nine states the Articles required.

6.3 inventing a Federal Republic
Even before all the delegates had arrived, Madison drew up a framework for a new federal
Virginia plan Offered by system known as the Virginia Plan. It envisioned a national legislature of two houses,
6.4 James Madison and the virginia one elected directly by the people, the other chosen by the first house from nominations
delegation at the Constitutional made by the state assemblies. Representation in both houses was proportional to the
Convention, this proposal called
for a strong executive office and state’s population. The Virginia Plan also provided for an executive elected by Congress.
two houses of Congress, each with Madison persuaded Edmund Randolph, Virginia’s popular governor, to present this
representation proportional to a scheme to the convention on May 29. Randolph claimed that the Virginia Plan merely
state's population. revised sections of the Articles, but everyone, including Madison, knew better. “My
ideas,” Madison confessed, “strike . . . deeply at the old Confederation.” He was deter-
mined to restrain the state assemblies, and in the original Virginia Plan, Madison gave
the federal government power to veto state laws. Since most delegates at the Philadelphia
convention sympathized with the nationalist position, Madison’s blueprint for a strong
federal government was referred for further study and debate. Men who allegedly had
come together to reform the Confederation found themselves discussing the details of “a
national Government . . . consisting of a supreme Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary.”
The Virginia Plan had been pushed through the convention so fast that opponents
hardly had an opportunity to object. On June 15, they spoke up. William Paterson, a
New Jersey lawyer, advanced the so-called New Jersey Plan, which retained the unicameral
legislature in which each state possessed one vote but gave Congress new powers to tax and it would have otherwise received. As with most compromises, the one Franklin’s com-
regulate trade. Paterson argued that these revisions, while more modest than Madison’s plan, mittee negotiated fully satisfied no one. It did, however, overcome a major impasse.
would have greater appeal for the American people: “I believe that a little practical virtue is After the small states gained an assured voice in the upper house, the Senate, they
to be preferred to the finest theoretical principles, which cannot be carried into effect.” The cooperated enthusiastically in creating a strong central government.
delegates listened politely but only New Jersey, New York, and Delaware voted in favor of it. Despite these advances, in late August, a disturbing issue came before the convention.
Rejecting this framework did not resolve the most controversial issue before the con- It was a harbinger of the great sectional crisis of the nineteenth century. Many northern
vention. Paterson and others feared that under the Virginia Plan, small states would lose representatives wanted to end the slave trade immediately. They despised the three-fifths
their separate identities. They maintained that unless each state possessed an equal vote rule that seemed to award slaveholders extra power simply because they owned slaves. “It
in Congress, the small states would find themselves at the mercy of their larger neighbors. seemed now to be pretty well understood,” Madison jotted in his private notes, “that the real
This argument outraged delegates who favored a strong federal government. It difference of interest lay, not between the large and small but between the N. and Southn.
Quick Check awarded too much power to the states. “For whom [are we] forming a Government?” States. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination.”
Did the New Jersey plan represent James Wilson of Pennsylvania cried. “Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called Whenever northern delegates—and on this point they were not united—pushed
a significant retreat from the main States?” It seemed absurd that 68,000 Rhode Islanders should have the same voice in too aggressively, southerners threatened to bolt the convention, thereby destroying any
points of the Virginia plan? hope of establishing a strong national government. Curiously, even recalcitrant south-
Congress as 747,000 Virginians.
erners avoided using the word slavery. They seemed embarrassed to call the institution
by its true name. In the Constitution itself, slaves were described as “other persons,”
Compromise Saves the Convention “such persons,” “persons held to Service or Labour,” everything but slaves.
Mediation was the only way to overcome what Roger Sherman of Connecticut called A few northern delegates such as Roger Sherman sought to mollify the southerners,
“a full stop in proceedings.” On July 2, the convention elected a “grand committee” of especially the South Carolinians, who spoke passionately about preserving slavery. Gouver-
one person from each state to resolve differences between the large and small states. neur Morris, a Pennsylvania representative, would have none of it. He reminded the conven-
Franklin, at age 81 the oldest delegate, served as chair. The two fiercest supporters of tion that “the inhabitant of Georgia and S.C. who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance
proportional representation, Madison and Wilson, were left off the committee, a sign of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest con-
that the small states would salvage something from the compromise. nections and damns them to the most cruel bondage, shall have more votes in a Government
The committee recommended equal representation for the states in the upper instituted for the protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa. or N. Jersey.”
house of Congress and proportionate representation in the lower house. Only the lower Ignoring Morris’s attacks, the delegates reached an uneasy compromise on the
three-fifths rule Constitutional house could initiate money bills. One member of the lower house should be selected for slave trade. Southerners feared that the new Congress would pass commercial regu-
provision that for every five
slaves a state would receive every 30,000 inhabitants of a state. Southern delegates insisted that this number include lations that hurt the planters—export taxes on rice and tobacco, for example. They
credit for three free voters in slaves. In the so-called three-fifths rule, the committee agreed that to determine repre- demanded a two-thirds majority of the federal legislature be required to pass trade laws.
determining seats for the House of sentation in the lower house, every five slaves in a congressional district would count as They backed down on this point, however, in exchange for guarantees that Congress
Representatives. three free voters. This gave the South much greater power in the new government than would not interfere with the slave trade until 1808 (see Chapter 8). The South even won
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