by Ray Raphael
4. John Adams, Diary, September 2, 1774, in LDC, 1:7; Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, September 10, 1774, in LDC, 1:61; Randolph to Henry Tazewell, February 3, 1775, cited in Jack Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 51; Randolph to Mann Page Jr., Lewis Willis, and Benjamin Grymes Jr., April 27, 1775, cited in Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 60; Adams, Diary, September 2, 1774, in LDC, 1:7.
5. John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 9, 1774, in LDC, 1:164. On October 24, Adams expressed even greater frustration in his diary: “In Congress, nibbling and quibbling—as usual…. There is no greater mortification than to sit with half a dozen witts, deliberating upon a petition, address, or memorial. These great witts, these subtle criticks, these refined genius’s, these learned lawyers, these wise statesmen, are so fond of shewing their parts and powers, as to make their consultations very tedius” (in ibid., 236).
6. JCC, October 22, 1774, 1:94.
7. Ibid., June 2, 1775, 2:78.
8. Ibid., June 3, 1775, 79.
9. Committee of Secret Correspondence Statement, October 1, 1776, in LDC, 5:273. Emphasis appears in Franklin, Papers, 22:637.
10. Morris to Deane, December 20, 1776, in LDC, 5:627; Ellis P. Oberholtzer, Robert Morris: Patriot and Financier (New York: Macmillan, 1903), 293.
11. JCC, 6:1042, 1032.
12. Ibid., November 15, 1777, 9:921–22.
13. The various state constitutions can be viewed online at Yale Law School’s Avalon Project, “The American Constitution: A Documentary Record,” http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/constpap.asp.
14. The only new constitutions without an executive council were those of New Hampshire, which had no executive branch at all but did have a legislative council to temper the authority of its president, and New York, which transferred some appointive powers to a chancellor and others to a special committee that included himself and four members of the senate.
15. South Carolina’s provisional constitution, drafted before independence, granted its president an absolute veto power, but after independence an amended constitution eliminated the executive veto.
16. Allan Nevins, The American States During and After the Revolution, 1775–1789 (New York: Macmillan, 1924), 374; McDonnell, Politics of War, 462–65, 469.
17. Hamilton to Duane, September 3, 1780, in Hamilton, Papers, 2:400–18.
18. JCC, February 7, 1781, 19:126.
19. Reed to Greene, November 1, 1781, in The Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, ed. E. James Ferguson (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973), 1:21.
20. Clarence Ver Steeg, Robert Morris: Revolutionary Financier (New York: Octagon Books, 1972), 166–67.
21. Madison, Papers, Congressional Series, 9:385.
CHAPTER THREE: FIRST DRAFT
1. For the cool spring, see James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 15, 1787, and Rufus King to Henry Knox, June 3, 1787, in Farrand, Records, 4:20, 64. For the weather on June 1 and other dates, see William Johnson, Diary, in ibid., 552.
2. This concluding phrase, and the concept, are explicated and defended by Max M. Edling in A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
3. Farrand, Records, 3:88–89; Madison, Notes, June 1.
4. Madison, Notes, June 6.
5. Farrand, Records, 3:94.
CHAPTER FOUR: SECOND GUESSES
1. Hamilton, Papers, 4:186. Hamilton’s written notes to himself, along with his “Plan of Government” and Madison’s, John Lansing’s, and Rufus King’s rendition of his speech, appear in ibid., 178–211. His “Draft of a Constitution,” an elaboration that he handed to Madison near the end of the convention, appears in ibid., 253–74. His June 18 “Plan for Government” also appears in Madison, Notes, under that date.
2. Farrand, Records, 1:301.
3. Hamilton, Papers, 4:186.
4. Yates’s account is in Farrand, Records, 1: 363.
5. King’s account is in ibid., 366. Morris’s recollection is from Morris to Robert Walsh, February 5, 1811, in ibid., 3:418. Johnson’s claim that nobody came forth in support of Hamilton might have been correct at that moment, but on June 29, eight days after Johnson made that remark and eleven days after Hamilton delivered his speech, one delegate, George Read of Delaware, expressed support for Hamilton’s national system, proclaiming that the Virginia Plan, still the working draft, had “too much of a federal mixture in it.” Read wished that Hamilton’s plan, which was “truly national,” could be “substituted in place of that on the table.” Nobody came to Read’s defense, however, just as nobody had initially supported Hamilton. Perhaps it was coincidental, but the morning after Read spoke in his behalf and received no response from other delegates, Hamilton departed the convention. Note that even Read, who agreed with Hamilton’s extreme nationalism, said nothing in support of Hamilton’s preference for a lifelong American “monarch.”
6. Ibid., 3:89.
7. Ibid., 92.
8. Morris to Thomas Penn, May 20, 1774, Gouverneur Morris’s Letters, http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_gom4502, accessed November 11, 2009.
CHAPTER FIVE: GOUVERNEUR MORRIS’S FINAL PUSH
1. Farrand, Records, 2:134, 137, 145, 163, 171.
2. Clinton Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 202.
3. New York’s three delegates had all gone back to their home state. Hamilton left because he was always outvoted by the antinationalists John Lansing and Robert Yates, and Lansing and Yates left shortly after because they were always outvoted by the rest of the convention.
4. Morris’s comments here are taken from the notes of James McHenry, in Farrand, Records, 2:407.
5. This committee is often called the Committee on Postponed Matters, the Committee on Postponed Parts, or the Committee on Remaining Matters, but these are later appellations. I use here the contemporary designation, the Committee of Eleven, following the convention’s official journal, Madison’s Notes, and how the committee referred to itself, even though the name repeats that of an earlier committee.
6. Dickinson to George Logan, January 16, 1802, in Supplement to Max Farrand’s “The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787,” ed. James H. Hutson (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), 300–301. The following year, in a private letter, Pierce Butler wrote: “His [the president’s] Election, the mode of which I had the honor of proposing in the Committee …” (Pierce Butler to Weedon Butler, May 5, 1888, in Farrand, Records, 3:302). Some historians have taken this passing remark, within a dependent clause of a private letter, as sufficient evidence to attribute exclusive authorship to Butler. Although Butler might conceivably have moved the final proposal, he did not own this plan. All elements had been suggested before. On July 25, Dickinson had suggested a two-part process, a nomination procedure and a final vote. Also on July 25, Williamson had suggested that each elector vote for three candidates, at least one from a state not his own, and Morris had refined that process to a two-candidate system that the committee finally adopted. The original elector plan had come on June 2 from Wilson, who was not on the committee. Butler probably helped synthesize the elements, but his fellow foes of legislative selection no doubt had their say, while Sherman must have spoken on behalf of the runoff within Congress, and the small-state delegates certainly pushed for disproportionate representation. This was a politically motivated process, not the instantaneous brainstorm of Butler, Dickinson, Morris, or any other individual.
7. While the necessity for compromise helps us understand the complexities of the plan, it does not explain why that plan was preferred over some form of popular election. For that we must look to the deep resistance to popular elections ingrained in the mi
nds of most delegates. Some historians, unwilling to acknowledge the antidemocratic proclivities of the Constitution’s framers, claim they really had no choice in the matter. It would have been impossible to create an election machinery on a national scale, they say, and any attempt to develop a uniform franchise requirement would have torn the convention asunder. This defense begs the question. The Committee of Eleven could have called for popular elections in each state without a federal machinery; such elections could be conducted by state governments and open to voters enfranchised by local standards. The framers had no difficulty in reverting to state standards in legislative elections, and they could have done the same for executive elections. Further, to prevent a state from achieving undue influence by expanding its electorate and boosting its vote totals, the Committee of Eleven could have weighted each state’s popular votes according to a preexisting formula, just as it did in its elector plan, and that formula might well have been the same as that of the final system, based on the total number of representatives and senators from each state. One handy way of doing this would have been to give each state a certain number of “electors” but, rather than allow these electors to make their own decisions, bind them to the results of popular elections, as is the custom today. Expecting representatives to follow instructions from their constituents was common in New England and practiced to some extent elsewhere during the Revolutionary era, so it would not have been a stretch to build on this custom and have the populace instruct electors. (See Ray Raphael, “The Democratic Moment: The Revolution in Popular Politics,” in The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution [New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming].) In sum, there was no objective or mechanical reason to institute an intermediate level of decision makers between the people and the president; that was a discretionary decision to keep the people from voting directly for the president. Although five states (New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) chose their governors through popular elections, selecting the nation’s chief executive was too critical a task to be left to an untutored electorate, most delegates believed.
8. We have direct evidence of further small-state/large-state negotiations that figured into this compromise. Back on July 16, as part of the so-called Great Compromise that established proportional representation in the House and equal voting in the Senate, delegates had stipulated that all money bills must originate in the House. That provision had been overturned on August 8, however, and this caused great consternation in the minds of some delegates from large states. Accordingly, the Committee of Eleven reversed the decision of August 8, returning to the original compromise of July 16. When the committee’s reversal was discussed on September 5, Gouverneur Morris commented, “It had been agreed to in the Committee on the ground of compromise.” Later that day, Rufus King “observed that the influence of the small States in the Senate was somewhat balanced by the influence of the large States in bringing forward the candidates; and also by the concurrence of the small States in the Committee in the clause vesting the exclusive origination of money bills in the House of Representatives.” To this Madison affixed a rare and revealing footnote: “This explains the compromise mentioned above by Mr. Govr. Morris. Col. Masson Mr. Gerry & other members from large States set great value on this privilege of originating money bills. Of this the members from the small States, with some from the large States who wished a high mounted Govt endeavored to avail themselves, by making that privilege, the price of arrangements in the constitution favorable to the small States, and to the elevation of the Government.” In short, the compromise that gave large states greater influence in the first stage of the election process but small states greater influence in the Senate runoff was linked to even more sweeping negotiations.
9. Dickinson, on the following day, managed to ensure that the Senate’s appointive powers extended no further than ambassadors and Supreme Court justices, but he did not challenge these.
10. Morris’s fingerprints can be found on other changes emerging from the Committee of Eleven. The idea of voting for two candidates was his, first suggested on July 25. When the committee inserted a fourteen-year residency requirement for the president, it did not pull that number out of a hat—back on August 9, Morris had pushed that requirement for senators.
11. Hamilton to King, August 10, 1787, in Hamilton, Papers, 4:235. For Morris’s writing this draft, see Morris to Timothy Pickering, December 22, 1814, in Farrand, Records, 3:420; James Madison to Jared Sparks, April 8, 1831, in Farrand, Records, 3:499; Ezra Stiles, Diary (based on Abraham Baldwin’s account), December 21, 1787, in Farrand, Records, 3:170.
12. For Morris’s biographers and why they failed to focus on his maneuverings, see the Postscript.
13. In the spray of small details that scattered the floor debates over the final four days, one additional issue marginally affected the presidency. In previous drafts, the U.S. treasurer was to be appointed jointly by Congress, which raised and appropriated the funds the treasurer was supposed to guard. John Rutledge, though, wanted the president, not Congress, to choose the treasurer, and Gouverneur Morris instantly agreed. Morris’s reasoning was a bit strange: Congress would do a better job of overseeing an officer who had been appointed by somebody else. Throughout the convention, Morris had argued that the president should be chosen by someone other than Congress to achieve more independence; now he was saying an independent appointee could be more closely scrutinized. Although his argument made no sense, it further revealed Morris’s stance: the executive should receive all powers the convention was willing to give it. Rutledge’s motion prevailed, not for Morris’s reasons, but for consistency, since most similar appointments now lay with the president.
CHAPTER SIX: SELLING THE PLAN
1. Mason to Jefferson, May 26, 1788, in Mason, Papers, 3:1045.
2. Ibid., 991–92; DHRC, 8:43–45 or 13:348–50.
3. Mason, Papers, 3:1001–5; DHRC, 8:46.
4. Washington, Diaries, 5:186; DHRC, 13:243.
5. Washington to Mason and Mason to Washington, October 7, 1787, in Mason, Papers, 3:1001, 1004–5.
6. Madison to Washington, September 30, 1787, in DHRC, 8:27 or 13:275; Washington to Madison, October 10, 1787, in ibid., 8:49 or 13:358–59. For the publication of Mason’s “Objections,” see ibid., 13:346–48.
7. Washington to Henry, Harrison, and Nelson, September 24, 1787, in ibid., 8:15.
8. Washington to Knox, October 15, 1787, in ibid., 56–57; and Washington to Stuart, October 17, 1787, in ibid., 69.
9. Hamilton to Washington, November 10, 1787, Madison to Washington, November 18, 1787, Washington to Stuart, November 30, 1787, and Washington to Madison, December 7, 1787, in ibid., 152, 167–68, 181–82, 193–94, 224.
10. Washington, Writings, 26:483–96.
11. Mason’s “Objections,” in DHRC, 8:45 or 13:350; Washington to Stuart, November 30, 1787, in ibid., 8:193.
12. Washington to Madison, December 7, 1787, in ibid., 8:224; Washington to Stuart, November 30, 1787, in ibid., 193.
13. Donald to Jefferson, November 12, 1787, in ibid., 155.
14. Ibid., 197, 216, 276–78.
15. Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 6:119.
16. Ibid., 125; Madison, Notes, September 17.
17. Grayson to William Short, November 20, 1787, in DHRC, 8:150; Lee to Randolph, October 16, 1787, in ibid., 61.
18. John G. Roberts, “An Exchange of Letters Between Jefferson and Quesnay de Beaurepaire,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, April 1942, 134–42; Virginius Dabney, Richmond: The Story of a City (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 40–44.
19. Mason to Martin Cockburn, May 26, 1774, in Mason, Papers, 1:190.
20. DHRC, 9:963–64.
21. For Robertson’s note taking, see ibid., 902–6.
22. Ibid., 962.
23. Ibid., 1045, 1063.
24. Ibid., 1051, and 10:
1476.
25. Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 5:196, 4:277, 3:129.
26. DHRC, 10:1378–79.
27. Storing, Complete Anti-Federalist, 5:196.
28. John DeWitt, Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania, and Federal Farmer, in ibid., 4:26, 3:162, 2:304.
29. Ibid., 3:129, 89–90.
30. Madison, Notes, September 15.
31. DHRC, 10:1376.
32. The amendments can be found in the respective volumes of DHRC, in The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History, ed. Bernard Schwartz (New York: Chelsea House, 1971), vol. 2, or by searching the Web site of Yale Law School’s Avalon Project for “ratification” plus each particular state.
33. New York also tried to close a worrisome loophole. In case of death or incapacity of both the president and the vice president, Congress was empowered to appoint their successors, but nowhere was it stipulated that these would serve only for the remainder of a four-year term. To solve this, they proposed there must be a presidential election every four years.
34. DHRC, 9:822, 10:1547–50.
35. Ibid., 10:1373–75.
36. Ibid., 1373; Madison, Notes, May 31; Storing, Complete Anti-Federalist, 2:115, 5:168. Cato is believed to have been either Governor George Clinton or Abraham Yates (DHRC, 13:255).
37. DHRC, 10:1376. Although creating a method for popular elections would have presented great political challenges, it would not have been impossible at the Federal Convention. (See chapter 5, note 7.) After the convention, however, the difficulties in negotiating compromises addressing the issues mentioned in this paragraph were greatly magnified; coming up with a politically viable alternative within the state ratifying conventions was nearly impossible.
38. Ibid., 2:566–67.
39. Madison, Notes, September 4, 6, and 7; DHRC, 13:341.