by Ron Carter
* * * * *
The cooling southwest winds held overnight, and at ten o’clock the following morning the delegates were once more in their chairs, sorting papers and reviewing notes, when Washington called the convention to order. He yielded the dais to Gorham, and the committee settled in.
Pinckney arose and moved to reconsider the clause respecting the negative, or veto power, in the national government against state laws, and waited. There was no second.
In the quiet that followed, Dickinson rose, coughed, and moved that the members of the national senate ought to be chosen by the state legislatures, and not the people. Sherman seconded, and once again, the debate heated.
Sherman insisted that if the state legislatures were responsible for appointing national senators, it would obviously tend to bind the two governments together harmoniously. Pinckney raised the question of how many senators was each state to have? After all, if the small states were given one, and the balance were given senators according to population, there would be in excess of eighty senators—far too many for the senate to fulfill its purpose of balancing the great number of representatives in the house.
Wilson shook his head. If the house was elected by the people and the senate appointed by the state legislatures, the bicameral government they were talking about would have two chambers resting on different foundations, and mischief would occur. The only remedy was to have both chambers, house and senate, elected by the people.
A tiny buzz began in the far reaches of the minds of Washington, Franklin, Madison, Mason, Randolph, and a few others. The big states with triple the power of the small states in the senate? The large states already had the power in the house of representatives, since that chamber was elected by the common people. If the large states were also to have the balance of power in the senate, what was to restrain the large states from making the small states their pawns, or worse, nonentities? The buzz held and began to grow, and those who heard it cringed and remained silent. They said nothing, but in their hearts they knew that sooner or later that single issue was going to ignite a war inside the East Room. The only question was when.
Debate quieted, a motion for the vote was seconded, and Jackson recorded the results. On the issue of having the state legislatures appoint the national senate: Aye: ten. Nay: zero. The national senate would be appointed by the state legislatures.
Gorham, with his years of experience in the old Confederation Congress, including his time as president, correctly read the mood of the delegates. It was enough for the day.
“This committee is adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning, Friday, June eighth.”
* * * * *
The winds died in the night, and Friday broke with a clear, cloudless sky, calm and cool. By shortly after nine o’clock most delegates were out in the streets, striding to the Statehouse, gathering their inner selves for whatever Gorham and the delegates divined should be the next issue that would have them battering at each other’s views.
David Brearly of New Jersey paused at the breakfast table of his boardinghouse before he walked out the door to casually glance at the headlines on the four-page newspaper, Herald. His head dropped forward in disbelief, and wide-eyed, he read the printed line again.
“RHODE ISLAND EJECTED FROM UNION.”
For a moment he stood stock-still, mind reeling. Dismissed? By whom? How? Why? When?
He snatched up the paper and silently read the column, astonished by the harsh, scathing accusations against the tiny state. The article declared the delegates to the Grand Convention had deeply resented Rhode Island, often referred to as “Rogue Island,” for her blind, insulting refusal to send representatives to the Convention. Worse, her leaders had openly stated they wanted no part of this attempt to form a national government.
It continued, “Rhode Island still perseveres in that impolitic, unjust, and scandalous conduct which seems to have marked all her public councils of late. Consequently, no representation is yet here from thence.”
The article ripped the tiny state from one end to the other. Rhode Island had from earliest times been a pigheaded rogue. She was the only state to be established without a state religion and quickly became a haven for the radicals, the atheists, and the disbelievers. Her freethinking on religion spilled over into her freethinking on spending. With the end of the war, it was Rhode Island that printed cheap, nearly valueless paper money to pay its debts, and forced creditors to accept it as payment. Then the tiny state repudiated its debt to the federal government! It never paid its share of the horrendous costs of winning the war with Britain!
Deep into the article came the only favorable commentary, written by the businessmen and merchants of the state to George Washington, confessing their embarrassment at the conduct of their state and apologizing for the state’s behavior and its absence from the convention. The letter to Washington said:
“The merchants, tradesmen, and others of this place, deeply affected with the evils of the present unhappy times, have thought proper to communicate in writing their approbation of your meeting. It is the general opinion here that full power for the regulation of the commerce of the United States ought to be vested in the National Council.”
Brearly suddenly raised his head, jerked out his pocket watch, and tucked the newspaper under his arm as he hurried out the door into the streets. Within the first two blocks of his rapid walk to the Statehouse, he realized the article was either a great hoax or blatantly wrong, since it was doubtful that the Confederation could exclude Rhode Island, or any other state, from the union, because the Articles of Confederation made no such provision. To the contrary, the Articles referred to a “perpetual union.”
At ten minutes before ten o’clock, Joseph Fry checked Brearly’s credentials and admitted him into the East Room where delegates were gathered in groups. They held newspapers and were reading to each other, heartily laughing, outdoing each other with slanderous and comic remarks about the little state that had thumbed its nose at them. It never occurred to them that someone ought to send a stern warning to the Herald that any further articles claiming to have information of what was being done inside the East Room would be dealt with by the law, and, in any event, the article was a blatant lie, slanderous against Rhode Island, and ought to result in a gigantic lawsuit against the newspaper!
Nothing ever came of it.
But with all the excitement, and the uproarious field day the delegates enjoyed poking pins and needles in Rhode Island, a vague shadow arose in the recesses of the mind of every man. If the tiniest state of all has already said no to the whole concept of trying to unite thirteen separate states, with thirteen separate constitutions and governments, how fragile were the chances of ever tying them together forever?
At ten o’clock George Washington convened the convention and yielded the dais to Nathaniel Gorham, who wasted no time.
Pinckney moved that the national legislature should have authority to negative all laws passed by the state legislatures, which the national legislature should judge to be improper, since to vest the national legislature with less than that would be its undoing. Madison seconded the motion, and the debate flowed.
Williamson argued against giving the national legislature a power that might restrain the states from regulating their internal police. Gerry could not see the outer extent of such power, and was against granting the national legislature any power that was not necessary, but had no definition of what was meant by “necessary.” Sherman argued that the negative powers should be defined, but could not describe how. The day wore on with no one yet able to find concept or language that would put the question squarely on the ground in understandable form, and the vote was called for.
Aye: three. Nay: seven. They weren’t yet ready to grant the veto power to the national legislature.
A tired Gorham adjourned until the next morning, Saturday, June ninth, and at ten o’clock the frustrated delegates were once more in their places when Gorham called
the committee to order and Gerry took the floor.
“I renew my prior motion, namely, that the national executive should be elected by the executives of the states whose proportion of votes should be the same with that allowed to the states in the election of the senate.”
The buzz that had started in the back of their heads within the past forty-eight hours was still there. Are the big states to have more power in electing the executive branch of the new government than the small states? Will the small states stand for it? Or will it wreck the entire convention?
Randolph rose. “I strongly urge the inexpediency of Mr. Gerry’s mode of appointing the national executive. The small states would lose all chance of an appointment from within themselves. Bad appointments would be made, since the executives of the states are obviously not conversant with conditions, or with men, outside their own small spheres. Worse, the states will select an executive who is sympathetic and partial to the affairs of their separate state, and not the national affairs. If a vacancy occurs, how is it to be filled?”
The vote was called for, and Jackson recorded the result. Aye: zero. Nay: ten. The state executives would not be electing or appointing the national executive.
There was a pause before Paterson of New Jersey stood. “I move that the committee resume debate on the clause relating to the issue of voting for the national legislature.”
Brearly quickly seconded and launched into a discourse in favor of the small states. Had not this same issue been thrashed out in the old Confederation, with the result that each state, regardless of size, was given one vote? Should any scheme be contrived granting large states greater voting power, the smaller states would suffer. Judging by the disparity of the states by the quota of congress, Virginia would have sixteen votes, and Georgia one. Three states—Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—could outvote all the rest of the states combined, and if they had that power, human nature being what it is, it would only be a matter of time until they did so, to the wounding of all lesser states.
Then Brearly made a proposal that stunned the entire delegation. The remedy, he proposed, was simple. Spread out a map of the United States, erase all existing state borders and boundaries, and partition the entire United States into thirteen equal parts!
Paterson rose and entered into a long, verbose discourse that boiled to one simple proposition. Reconfiguring the United States was impracticable, and, if states were given voting power by population, it could only be seen as a strike at the smaller states. It would eventually defeat itself.
It was not stated in words, but the thinly veiled innuendo could not be missed. For the first time, it was implied that if the small states were to find themselves at the mercy of the voting power of the large ones, they would have no reason to maintain their place in the union. The conclusion was inevitable: they would sever from the United States.
Sobered, alarmed, the delegates maintained their silence, and Paterson concluded. “There is so much depending on this issue, it might be thought best to postpone the decision until tomorrow.”
Gorham declared debate concluded for the day, and since tomorrow was Sunday, the tenth day of June, adjourned the committee until Monday, June eleventh, at ten o’clock.
The delegates rose and began gathering their papers, eyes narrowed in thought as they concentrated on what they now sensed was an issue that could erupt at any time to destroy not only the convention, but tear the union into pieces. How tremulous, how frail was the union? Could they lose it all, over the question of big states versus little ones? It was clear that to give a small state the same voting powers as large ones would be to vest in a citizen of a small state more power than a citizen of a large one. Conversely, to give citizens in all states the same voting powers would favor the large states. Manifestly they could not make big states smaller, nor small ones larger. How, then, could they untie the Gordian knot?
As they filed out of the East Room, not one of them could conceive of an answer. But each of them could conceive of the result if they failed to find one.
Notes
The proceedings set forth in this chapter are found as follows:
Bernstein, Are We to Be a Nation? pp. 160–62.
Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention, Volume 1, pp. 115–91.
Moyers, Report from Philadelphia, pages designated Tuesday, June 5, 1787, through Saturday, June 9, 1787.
Warren, The Making of the Constitution, pp. 189–204.
Berkin, A Brilliant Solution, pp. 90–95.
Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution of the United States, pp. 76–83.
Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention, pp. 173–75.
The humorous anecdote of Benjamin Franklin regarding the system used by Scotland in selecting judges and the story of the Philadelphia newspapers reporting an intent to eject Rhode Island from the United States, are found in the above reference from Moyers, Report from Philadelphia, as well as other places.
Part Two
Philadelphia
June 11–19, 1787
Chapter XVII
* * *
Most of the delegates sensed the collision that was coming between the large states and the small and shuddered. In the first seventeen days of the convention, the issue had slowly risen and defined itself until it eclipsed all others. The question was simple. In the new national congress, how would the power be divided among the states? If done by population, three states—Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts—could collectively control the entire nation, and with the power to do so, it would only be a matter of time until they did. If done by vesting the voting power equally among all the states, then the small states could conceivably control the larger ones.
The small states had openly declared that they would not become the pawns and the doormats for the larger states. Before they would allow it, they would break from the union and go their own way. The large states had indignantly made it known that they would not allow their citizenry to be crippled by the interests of the small states. Before they would allow such a thing, they likewise would secede from the union to form their own governments. The deadly collision was coming, sooner than later, and it could rip the convention, and the United States, into small republics, or kingdoms, or monarchies, that would inevitably degenerate into the abysmal pattern of European history: bickering, then contentions, and finally the inevitable descent into the unending wars that would sap them until the dream of the revolution was forever lost.
Recognizing the oncoming threat was one thing. Recognizing that they faced the burden of inventing a workable solution to it was another. With almost nothing in the history of mankind to serve as their polar star, they were beginning to understand that they would have to create a new government from their own native genius, and it was this that filled them with apprehension as they gathered at the Statehouse and took their places at ten o’clock on Monday morning, June eleventh, 1787. They sat nervously while Washington went through the now familiar and somewhat boring procedure of calling the convention to order and turning the dais over to Gorham to conduct the business of the committee of the whole. They had hardly drawn a breath when Roger Sherman rose.
“I propose that the proportion of votes in the house of representatives should be according to the respective numbers of free inhabitants in each state, and that in the senate, each state should have one vote and no more. Since each state will remain possessed of certain individual rights, each state ought to be able to protect itself. If it is not so, then a few large states will rule the rest. The House of Lords in England have certain particular rights under their constitution, and thus they have an equal vote with the House of Commons that they may defend their rights.”
Gunning Bedford rose abruptly. “Will not these large states crush the small ones whenever they stand in the way of their ambitions or interested views? It seems as if Pennsylvania and Virginia wish to provide a system in which they will have an enormous and monstrous influence.”
The quiet words, “Hear, hear,” came from somewhere, and then David Brearly of New Jersey rose. “The large states—Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—will carry everything before them. Virginia with her sixteen votes will be a solid column indeed, while Georgia with her solitary vote and the other little states will be obliged to throw themselves constantly into the scale of some large one in order to have any weight at all.”
They were into it up to their fetlocks, and every man in the room was focused, intense, waiting, watching for the first signs of a schism between the large and the small states. It came when William Paterson of New Jersey, with her small population, rose, defiant, loud.
“I declare that I will never consent! Myself or my state will never submit to tyranny or despotism!”
Wide-eyed, James Wilson of Pennsylvania recoiled in disbelief. Tyrant? Despot? Had Patterson implied that the state of Pennsylvania was a tyrant? A despot? Hot, white-faced in outrage, Wilson rose and his voice was too high, too loud.
“Let it be understood! New Jersey should not have the same strength in congress as the state of Pennsylvania, since it has much fewer numbers in its citizenry. It is unjust! I will never confederate on this plan. If no state will part with any of its sovereignty, it is in vain to talk of a national government!”
They were there. The single greatest issue that could rip the country into pieces was on the floor of the convention. One small state had sworn it would never submit to the will of large ones. One large state had declared there was no other way. The battle lines were drawn, clear, final.
For several seconds that seemed an eternity no one spoke, and then John Rutledge rose, shaking his head. “I propose that the proportion of votes in the house should be according to the amount of money contribution of each state. In my view, the justice of this rule cannot be contested.”
Pierce Butler loudly called, “Second the motion.”