by Ron Carter
Few could remember a more somber closing when Washington adjourned for the day. Nor did any know that when he reached his quarters in the Robert Morris mansion, Washington sat down for a long time, head bowed, shoulders slumped, in utter despair. It was later in the evening that he took up his quill and poured out the despondency and fears that were tearing his heart in a letter to his former aide and longtime friend, Alexander Hamilton, in New York.
“When I refer you to the state of the counsels which have prevailed at the period you left this city, and add that they are now, if possible, in a worse train than ever, you will find but little ground on which the hope of a good establishment can be formed. In a word, I almost despair of seeing a favorable issue to the proceedings of our convention, and do therefore repent having had any agency in the business. The men who oppose a strong and energetic government, are, in my opinion, narrow-minded politicians. . . . The apprehension expressed by them, that the people will not accede to the form proposed, is the ostensible, not the real cause of opposition. . . . The proper question ought nevertheless to be: Is it or is it not the best form that such a country as this can adopt? If it be the best, we must recommend it. . . . I am sorry you went away. I wish you were back. The crisis is equally important and alarming, and no opposition, under such circumstances, should discourage exertions till the signature is offered.”
Washington, the man with a will of steel, lost in hopeless despair? Repentant of ever having associated with the Grand Convention? The man who had alone borne the revolution on his shoulders for eight harsh years? Sick in his heart?
Only Washington would ever know the feelings that rode him that night. Did his thoughts reach back to the early months of 1778 when he and his army were camped a short twenty-six miles from Philadelphia, along the frozen banks of the Schuylkill River at the place called Valley Forge, sick, emaciated, freezing, starving to death? Three thousand of them dead and buried in five months, rather than fail their country. Was it all lost? Those terrible, black days, wasted? Eight years of struggle against odds that would have crushed a lesser man—all for nothing?
Wednesday, July eleventh, the insoluble snarl worsened and the debate with it. What duty should be placed on the House of Representatives to police itself on a regular basis to be certain growing states, and new states, got their fair share of representatives? How often should such duty be exercised? Yearly? When needed?
Butler and Pinckney thumped their desks when they declared that the slaves ought to be included in the voting equally with the whites, and that the three-fifths recommendation be stricken from the record.
Gerry declared that the three-fifths rule was the highest figure that would even be considered. Mason agreed that slaves were valuable to the states where they provided labor, and ought to be in the mix, but not equal to whites. Three-fifths was acceptable.
Paterson again hotly stated his opinion that slaves are nothing beyond property and ought not be included in the debate at all.
Gouverneur Morris rose to declare that the people of his state—Pennsylvania—would rise up in revolt if they found themselves on the same footing as slaves!
William Davies of North Carolina sprang up, hot, loud. “Three-fifths is the least ratio North Carolina will tolerate! Anything less, and I will leave the convention.”
The fear that the southern states would walk out as a block if they were abused by the slavery issue had been lurking in the minds of every delegate present, and with the threat now thrown down by Davies still ringing off the walls, hot heads cooled, and a sense of sanity settled among the delegates.
They reached a consensus. Slaves would be counted on the basis of three-fifths. But the document that declared it did not use the term slaves. They were instead included in other persons. The delegates could not bring themselves to endure the embarrassment of the use of the term slaves.
The other arguments raged on and blended into July twelfth, then Friday, July thirteenth, and Saturday, July fourteenth. Sunday, July fifteenth, forced both sides to take a step back and cool their ardor, and reflect on what they saw coming in the morning.
The morning of Monday, July sixteenth, 1787, broke still and hot, as had so many other preceding mornings, but there was not a man who failed to sense the electricity in the air as the convention gathered again in the East Room. It was like something alive, raising the hair on their arms. They took their places and Washington called them to order.
“The first order of business is the question of representation in the Congress. Mr. Secretary, read the proposal.”
Jackson read slowly and loudly, tracking with his finger on the written document.
“Representation in the House of Representatives shall be a total of sixty-five, subject to adjustment as needed in the future, which sixty-five shall be apportioned among the various states according to the numbers previously assigned.”
He paused for a moment and then went on. “The House of Representatives shall be vested with the power of originating bills related to money, with no interference from the Senate.”
Never had the room been so silent as when he read the last proposal:
“Each state shall have two senators in the Senate, each senator with an equal vote.”
All that had gone before, beginning with the first shot fired on the small, beautiful green at Lexington the morning of April 19, 1775, was but prologue. The next three minutes would see the United States stand, or fall. It all came down to this.
Jackson called for the vote.
Massachusetts. Divided.
Connecticut. Aye.
New Jersey. Aye.
Pennsylvania. Nay.
Delaware. Aye.
Maryland. Aye.
Virginia. Nay.
North Carolina. Aye.
South Carolina. Nay.
Georgia. Nay.
With held breath the delegates counted the votes, and counted again.
Five ayes.
Four nays.
Massachusetts divided, no vote. Had Massachusetts not been divided—if either Gerry or Strong, who voted aye, had not done so, but had voted no with King and Gorham, the proposal would have deadlocked and failed, and the United States would have ceased to be. By the paper-thin margin of one vote, the United States would stand. The delegates from the large states sat dejected, shoulders slumped, eyes glazed, grasping for what to do.
Edmund Randolph of Virginia stormed to his feet, nearly out of control in anger. “I wish this convention to adjourn that the large states might consider the steps proper to be taken in the present solemn crisis.”
Gasps were heard throughout the hall. Adjourn? Simply stop and go home? Finish nothing? Abandon the Grand Convention?
Whatever Randolph had in mind, it was William Paterson who jerked out of his seat and turned directly to Randolph, voice hot, too loud, too accusing, and in two sentences threw down the challenge to Randolph.
“I think, with Mr. Randolph, that it is high time for the convention to adjourn, that the rule of secrecy ought to be rescinded, and that we be allowed to go to our constituents and tell them exactly what has just happened, and by whom. I second Mr. Randolph’s motion with all my heart!”
Randolph recoiled and fumbled to recover some sense of poise. For three seconds that seemed an eternity he tried to formulate something—anything—that would not result in his becoming the man that history would never forget as the one who tried to destroy America. He raised one hand defensively and his voice was shaking.
“No, no, I am sorry my meaning was so readily and strangely misinterpreted. I never meant an adjournment sine die. I had it in view merely to adjourn until tomorrow in order that some conciliatory experiment might, if possible, be devised, and that if the small states should continue to hold back, the larger states might then take such measures as might be necessary.”
For whatever reason, Mr. Randolph did not mention one such measure.
The vote for adjournment until tomorrow, July seventeen
th, passed, Ayes, seven, Nays, two, one state divided.
Washington watched the men arrange their tables and walk out, some talking, others silent as they tried to understand the significance of what had happened in the few explosive minutes the convention was in session. States that had been ready to dissolve the United States had stayed the course. They had risen above themselves to accept the vote. Randolph had fired the last, lone shot, and then backed down.
The morose, sick feeling that had crept into Washington’s heart lifted. He gathered the papers from his desk on the dais and raised his head once more to watch the delegates.
They have learned. That is what has been different the past several days—in the air. They were learning. They have risen above themselves—above selfish interests—above lust for power. Give and take. Compromise.
He tucked his papers under his arm and descended to floor level, and walked steadily down the aisle, and out into the great corridor.
Notes
The events, dates, persons, times, places, and speeches appearing in this chapter are taken from the following sources:
Berkin, A Brilliant Solution, pp. 107–12.
Warren, The Making of the Constitution, pp. 271–312.
Bernstein, Are We to Be a Nation? pp. 168–72.
Moyers, Report from Philadelphia, pages named Thursday, July 5, 1787, through Monday, July 16, 1787.
Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution, pp. 96–112.
Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention, pp. 186–92.
Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention, Volume 1, pp. 509–606; Volume 2, pp. 1–20.
Again the reader is reminded that the speeches and the proceedings have been abridged because it is impossible to include all that was said and debated in this work. Some speeches have been modified to make them more understandable today. Every effort has been made to preserve the intent and meaning of the speeches and debate, and any errors are those of this writer.
The very morose letter written by George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, in which Washington expressed despair and a feeling of repentance at even being part of the convention, is found in Warren, The Making of the Constitution, p. 284. The part appearing herein is nearly verbatim. It is the only instance where this writer has encountered such deep despondency in a document written by Washington.
The Atlantic, North of the Bahamas
Mid-July, 1787
CHAPTER XXII
* * *
The sameness of the days on the Zephyr became a blur as she plowed steadily north from her passage through the Straits of Florida, under a great yellow sun pounding heat down from the heavens during the days, and a velvet black dome overhead at night, spread with an eternity of stars that seemed so close the crew on the deck could almost reach up and stir them. Thirty-four men on board the tiny schooner were far too many; too much idle time on such a small vessel could all too quickly lead to trouble. Thus it was that from the break of dawn following the night they had shot their way out of Port Royal in a howling storm, Caleb had set four daily shifts that left no man with time on his hands. The deck had been soapstoned twice, all sails repaired, the cannon dismantled, cleaned, wrapped in canvas, and stored against the railings to appear as deck cargo, and all compartments below decks cleaned until they were spotless. The pants and shirts of the seamen were mended, beards and hair trimmed. Utensils in the galley had been rubbed with clean sand until they shone. All ropes and hawsers on the decks were coiled, and the anchor chain had been scraped of all barnacles.
They had flown the British Union Jack from the mainmast until they were clear of the Bahamas and out into the Atlantic, and then they raised the stars and stripes as they sped north, ninety miles off the East Florida coast. For the first three days they had a twenty-four hour watch on the stern of the ship and in the crow’s nest, telescopes in hand, watching south for any vessel flying the British flag that appeared to be in pursuit. There were none. They had seen ships with flags from three continents, but none had approached them. The fourth day they relaxed the vigil and reverted to the standard watch of two men on deck and one in the crow’s nest. They did not think there was a British ship in the Bahamas or the Caribbean that could catch the Zephyr in the open waters of the Atlantic.
In the glaring midmorning heat, Bartolo descended the rope ladder from the crow’s nest, and Pike made the sixty-foot climb, telescope in hand, to stand in the tiny cylinder while he scanned the horizon for sails and studied the clear waters off the bow for sandbars and coral reefs that appeared on no charts. The sails were tight and the little vessel cut a twenty-foot curl hissing as she sped north on seas only slightly ruffled by a steady southeast wind, to leave a white wake more than one hundred yards behind her stern.
Onboard the men went about the dullness of their duties, sometimes grinning for no reason, and humming, and occasionally bursting into a snatch of a sea shantey or a church hymn learned in their childhood. The spirit among them seemed to be a mix of well-being, and pride. Leaving Boston, few had expected to find themselves in the infamous Port Royal harbor on the island of Jamaica in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. And none had dreamed that under the cover of a wind-driven cloudburst they would open a British prison with four kegs of gunpowder, liberate sixteen Americans, blow fourteen British longboats to splinters, and escape the harbor by blasting the second deck out of a British man-o’-war, to leave her burning and sinking in the storm.
American soil was ninety miles to the west. If the winds held they would pass St. Augustine in the dusk of evening, and the great seaport of Savannah, Georgia, not long before dawn. From there, north and west past the Carolinas, the Chesapeake, Delaware Bay, New York, Cape Cod, and home. There was magic in the word, and the crew on the Zephyr was feeling good.
Up in the private little world of the crow’s nest, Pike raised his telescope and slowly turned from north to west, studying the flat line where the blue sky met the blue-green sea, and there was nothing. He continued his turn past south, then east, and back to north. There was not a sail in sight. He lowered his telescope and for a moment glanced down at the men on the deck below. He was raising his head when something in the sea fifty yards ahead and to starboard caught his eye, and he paused, hand raised to shield out the sun, trying to find it again, and then it was there, and he recognized it and recoiled.
“Man in the water,” he shouted, “fifty yards ahead, to starboard!”
Within seconds most of the crew was crowded along the bow railings, squinting against the sun-glare on the water, searching, and they saw it and for a moment stood in silence. A black body clad only in a loincloth was bobbing face down in the water, arms outspread.
Young shouted, “Spill the sails! Ready with a longboat!”
Seasoned men were in the rigging in less than one minute, turning the sails away from the wind, and the little ship was slowing as the body passed less than thirty feet from the staboard side.
“Slave,” Tunstall murmured.
Two minutes later a longboat was in the water, and as the Zephyr settled and stopped, the dead body was lifted limp and dripping and laid in the bottom of the longboat. The four men swung the boat around and brought her back alongside the schooner and lifted the corpse high to waiting hands that laid the body on the deck. With the crew gathered in a silent circle, staring at the dead black man, the ship’s surgeon knelt beside the body, thrust two fingers under the jaw, and closed his eyes to concentrate. After a few moments, he shook his head, then briefly examined the body before standing and backing away.
Kneeling beside the corpse, Caleb looked up at the surgeon. “How long has it been in the water?”
“Not long. Maybe a day.”
Caleb inspected the dead man. Short, blocky build, muscular, broad nose, thick lips. The scalp was split and the crown of the skull was caved in. The scarred wrists and ankles were raw from iron shackles. The back was criss-crossed with long welts from a whip, some old and healed, some still open. The mouth was sag
ged open, and four front teeth were missing. The face was that of a forty-year-old man. Caleb was no stranger to death and violence, but when he rose his face was white. He spoke again to the surgeon.
“You see his head?”
“I saw it.”
“Is that what killed him? Someone broke his skull?”
“Probably. If it didn’t kill him, he would never have recovered from it.”
“How old was he?”
“I’m guessing twenty-five. Maybe younger.”
“Those scars on his back. How old?”
“The oldest? Fifteen years or thereabouts.”
“They were beating him when he was ten?”
The surgeon nodded but stood silent, and Caleb continued.
“How did he lose the teeth?”
“Broken out. The stumps are still there.”
Caleb’s voice was quiet, and his eyes were like lightning as he concluded. “Have someone wrap him in canvas and get him belowdecks.” He turned to Young. “He has to be from a slaver. I think she’s ahead of us. What do you say?”
Young bobbed his head. “A slaver. Likely loaded at Santo Domingo, or Puerto Rico. Somewhere down there. Headed north. I’d expect Savannah, or Charleston. She’s ahead of us.”
Caleb cupped a hand to his mouth to call up to Pike, “Look sharp for more bodies, and for sails ahead of us.”
“Aye, sir.”
He turned to Tunstall. “Are we in waters usual to ships carrying cargo?”
“One of the main routes. If you’re asking will that slaver hold this course, my guess is yes, or close to it.”
“Then so do we. Tell the helmsman.”
Tunstall turned and walked back to the helmsman.
Caleb spoke to the silent crew. “Put out all canvas. Spankers, jib, all of it.”
Within minutes the little ship was cutting a thirty-foot curl, leaving a two-hundred yard white-water wake, both masts creaking under the strain of all sails full and tight. The crew went about their duties by habit while they peered north with the image of the dead black man bright in their minds. At one o’clock Bartolo took his second shift in the crow’s nest. Shortly before two o’clock his excited voice rang out.