5. Farrand, Aug. 6, 1787, 2: 177 (Committee of Detail’s Preamble); Farrand, Aug. 7, 1787, 2: 196 (vote). In describing his principles for writing the Preamble for the Committee of Detail, Randolph observed, “A preamble seems proper not for the purpose of designating the ends of government and human polities—This business . . . howsoever proper in the first formation of state governments, (seems) is unfit here; since we are not working on the natural rights of men not yet gathered into society, but upon those rights, modified by society.” Farrand, Committee of Detail IV, 2: 137.
6. In fact, Vermont joined the union in 1791, less than a year after Rhode Island. Newspaper articles published during the Convention speculated that the delegates would admit Vermont to the new union. E.g., “New York, August 16,” Cumberland Gazette, Aug. 30, 1787, p. 3. Some historians have suggested that Morris deleted the listing of states simply to address the concern that the Constitution might take effect prior to its ratification by some of the listed states, but others see it as a statement of his nationalism. E.g., see Richard Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris—The Rake Who Wrote the Constitution (New York: Free Press, 2003), 91; and Max M. Mintz, Gouverneur Morris and the American Revolution (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 200.
7. Jonathan Dayton to Ellas Dayton, Sept. 9, 1787, Farrand, 3: 80.
8. Madison later credited Morris with the initial work of reorganizing the articles into their finished form, adding that subsequent alterations by the full committee “were not such, as to impair the merit of the composition.” Madison to Sparks, Farrand, 3: 499.
9. Farrand, Committee of Detail IV, 2: 137.
10. Hamilton’s attendance at the Convention had been erratic after the delegates rejected a purely nationalist approach to the Constitution. On June 18, he countered the anti-nationalists’ New Jersey Plan with one of his own that would effectively abolish the states as sovereign entities and consolidate power in a British-style national government headed by a monarchical executive with life tenure and largely dominated by an aristocratic senate composed of members with life tenure. Farrand, June 18, 1787, 1: 291–93. After his plan received no support from any other delegates, he soon left Philadelphia, returned briefly in August, and then again by September 6, just in time to be added to the Committee of Style. Hamilton was haunted throughout his political life for having advocated such an anti-republican plan, with opponents pointing to it as exposing the “real” Hamilton. Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 234–39.
11. On the ideological makeup of this committee and some of the puzzles involved, see Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the Constitution (New York: Random House, 2009), 345–46; and Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier, Decision In Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), 337–38.
12. Farrand, June 20, 1787, 1: 335.
13. Compare Farrand, May 29, 1787, 1: 20 (Resolution 1) with Farrand, Committee of Detail I, 2: 129–33.
14. Morris reportedly tried to expand the nationalistic implications of the reference to “general welfare” in the Taxing Power Clause by substituting a semicolon for a comma prior to the reference, and thus making it a separate grant of power, but Sherman supposedly detected and reversed it. Compare Farrand, Committee of Style, 2: 594 (Art. I, sec. 8 [a]) with Farrand, The Constitution, 2: 655 (Art. I, sec. 8). The Democratic-Republican Party leader Albert Gallatin made this charge on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1798. Albert Gallatin, June 19, 1798, Farrand, 3: 378. Historians have debated its merits ever since. E.g., see Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, 90. With respect to interpreting the Constitution, Morris later observed, “This must be done by comparing the plain import of the words, with the general tenor and object of the instrument.” Morris to Pickering, Farrand, 3: 420.
15. Compare George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, July 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 257, with George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, Sept. 24, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 339. Washington made similar comments in late August. George Washington to Henry Knox, Aug. 19, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 297,
16. Letter to Congress, Sept. 17, 1787, Farrand, 2: 666–67 (Morris’s draft at Farrand, Sept. 12, 1787, 2: 583–84) (emphasis added); Resolutions of the Convention, Sept. 17, 1787, Farrand, 2: 665–66 (committee draft at Farrand, Sept. 13, 1787, 2: 604–5) (emphasis added).
17. Farrand, Sept. 12, 1787, 2: 588.
18. Ibid. For a fuller discussion of this issue, including Wilson and Madison stressing the enumerated powers and rights argument, see Beeman, Plain, Honest Men, 343.
19. George Washington to James Madison, March 31, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 115–16.
20. Beeman, Plain, Honest Men, 354.
21. Farrand, Aug. 31, 1787, 2: 479.
22. Although previously drafted, both the transmittal letter and final resolutions to Congress now added the tagline “By the Unanimous Order of the Convention.” See Farrand, Sept. 17, 1787, 2: 666–67.
23. Farrand, Sept. 17, 1787, 2: 648. By order of the Convention, miscellaneous papers from its proceedings not delivered to Washington were burnt. GWD, Sept. 17, 1787, 3: 237.
24. Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 310–12 (noting that “the government created by the Constitution contained none of the provisions that he would particularly have favored”).
25. Farrand, Sept. 17, 1787, 2: 642–43. According to Madison, Gouverneur Morris drew up “this ambiguous form” for signing the Constitution and put it “into the hands of Docr. Franklin that it might have a better chance of success.” Farrand, Sept. 17, 1787, 2: 643.
26. Farrand, Sept. 15, 1787, 631–32. Ironically, the dissenters held up the vice presidency for scorn—an office that Gerry would hold under two presidents. Farrand, Sept. 15, 1787, 639.
27. James Thomas Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation (1783–1793) (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 135. Washington later attributed Mason’s continued opposition to the Constitution to “pride, on the one hand, and want of manly candor on the other.” George Washington to James Craik, Sept. 8, 1789, WGW, 30: 396.
28. Farrand, Sept. 17, 1787, 2: 645–46.
29. Ibid. The three most vocal anti-nationalists at the Convention, Luther Martin, Robert Yates, and John Lansing, surely would have also refused to sign the Constitution. They had already left the Convention, however, and did not participate in the final vote or signing ceremony.
30. Ibid., 644. As described above in Chapter 5, this amendment lowered the minimum allowable ratio of representation in the House of Representatives from not to exceed one for every forty thousand persons to up to one for every thirty thousand persons. In his notes, Madison stated that this amendment “in some degree lessened” one of Mason’s objections. Farrand, Sept. 15, 1787, 2: 638. Political scientist Richard Ellis cites Washington’s vote as “an example of the general’s making concessions to political opponents in order to build greater support for the final product.” Richard J. Ellis, Founding the American Presidency (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 8. In a contemporary comment on Washington’s intervention, one newspaper reported, “Such was the magic of this patriot’s opinion! And it adds to the lustre of his virtues, that this critical interference . . . tended to promote the interests and dignity of THE PEOPLE.” “Anecdote,” Pennsylvania Herald, Nov. 7, 1787, p. 2.
31. Mason, Randolph, and Gerry appear with the thirty-nine signers and the Convention’s secretary in Louis S. Glanzman’s painting Signing to the Constitution, which hangs in Independence Hall and is less-well known than Christy’s Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States. Both present Washington and Franklin as the most prominent figures in the group portrait. Glanzman avoided the issue of open or shuttered windows by only showing the Assembly Room’s windowless back wall.
32. Farrand, Sept. 17, 1787, 2: 648.
33. Ibid., 649.
34. GWD, Sept. 17, 1787, 3: 237.
35. George Wash
ington to Lafayette, Sept. 18, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 334. See also George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, Sept. 18, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 333.
36. William Pierce, “Character Sketches of the Delegates to the Federal Convention,” Farrand, 3: 95.
37. “Philadelphia, October 10,” Connecticut Journal, Oct. 17, 1787, p. 2. The article was reprinted in twenty-five newspapers from New Hampshire to Georgia by mid-November. DHRC, 13: 243 n. 2.
38. George Washington to Henry Knox, Oct. 15, 1788, PGW, CS 5: 375 (“I arrived home . . . [to find] the fruits of the Earth almost entirely destroyed by one of the severest droughts (in this neighborhood) that ever was experienced”).
39. Washington to Lafayette, Sept. 18, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 334.
40. Quoted from Washington to Harrison, Sept. 24, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 339. In this letter, Washington wrote that “the political concerns of this Country are, in a manner, suspended by a thread” and that if the Convention had not agreed on the Constitution, “anarchy would soon have ensued.” Ibid. Washington sent the same letter to former governors Benjamin Harrison, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Nelson. Ibid., 240.
41. In October, Washington wrote, “It is highly probable that the refusal of our Governor and Colo. Mason to subscribe to the proceedings of the Convention will have a bad effect in this state.” Washington to Knox, Oct. 15, 1788, PGW, CS 5: 376.
42. “To the Freemen of Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Gazette, Oct. 10, 1787, p. 2; reprinted in “To the Freemen of Pennsylvania,” Independent Gazetteer, Oct. 15, 1787, p. 2.
43. “The Grand Constitution,” Columbian Herald, Nov. 8, 1787, p. 4 (the same song appeared in newspapers from New Hampshire to South Carolina during October and November 1787).
44. “For the Centinel,” Massachusetts Centinel, Oct. 6, 1787, p. 34.
45. In a private paper on the prospects for ratification probably dating from late September, Hamilton wrote at the outset, “The new constitution has in favour of its success . . . a very great weight of influence of the person who framed it, particularly in the universal popularity of General Washington.” Alexander Hamilton, “Conjectures About the Constitution,” Sept. 1787, DHRC, 13: 277.
46. Gouverneur Morris to George Washington, Oct. 30, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 400.
47. An example of such charges and their refutation appear in the essays signed “Centinel” and the responses to them that appeared in Philadelphia newspapers in October 1787, which are discussed more fully later in this chapter. E.g., Centinel, “To the Freemen of Pennsylvania,” Independent Gazetteer, Oct. 5, 1787, p. 2; Independent Gazetteer, Oct. 13, 1787, p. 2. Underscoring the weakness of such attacks, see “A few Observations,” Middlesex Gazette, Nov. 26, 1787, p. 2 (“to suppose that any act of [Washington], could be intended, in the most distant degree, to injure a people whose freedom he has already established, at the risque of his life and fortune, would be a piece of base ingratitude, that no honest American can possibly be guilty of”).
48. Hamilton, “Conjectures,” DHRC, 13:277.
49. “Pennsylvania Gazette, 26 September,” DHRC, 13: 253 (notes indicate that this observation was reprinted in thirty-eight newspapers within three weeks).
50. E.g., the principal French diplomat in the United States reported to his government in October that Americans “already speak of Gnl. Washington as the only man capable of filling the important position of President.” Lois Guillaume Otto to Comte de Montmorin, Oct. 20, 1787, DHRC, 13:423.
51. David Humphreys to George Washington, Sept. 28, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 343.
52. Morris to Washington, Oct. 30, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 400.
53. The eleven delegates to the Constitutional Convention then serving in Congress were Nicholas Gilman and John Langdon of New Hampshire, Nathaniel Gorman and Rufus King of Massachusetts, William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, Robert Yates of New York, James Madison of Virginia, William Blount of North Carolina, Pierce Butler of South Carolina, and William Few and William Pierce of Georgia. Nine of these eleven members of Congress had signed the Constitution.
54. For Washington’s take on Lee, see George Washington to James Madison, Oct. 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 366.
55. Articles of Confederation, Article XIII.
56. Constitution, Article VII.
57. Farrand, Aug. 31, 1787, 2: 482. Madison and Wilson also favored seven states so long as they made up a majority of the population, which may have been Washington’s position. Farrand, Aug. 31, 1787, 2: 471, 477.
58. Farrand, Sept. 17, 1787, 2: 665.
59. Congress met in secret and its official journal did not include minutes. The debate over the Constitution is reconstructed from surviving notes and letters of members in “The Confederation Congress and the Constitution,” Sept. 26–28, 1787, DHRC, 13: 229–41. All quotes come from these pages. An excellent summary of the debates appears in Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 52–59.
60. “Congress and the Constitution,” DHRC, 13: 238–40.
61. JCC, Sept. 28, 1787, 33: 549.
62. “New York, Sept. 26,” Daily Advertiser, Sept. 26, 1787, p. 2.
63. Lee’s resolution and the vote on postponing it, with strike marks through them, appears at JCC, Sept. 27, 1787, 33: 540–42. This material was stricken from the published journal after Congressman Abraham Clark commented, “The motion by Mr. Lee for amendments, will do injury by coming on the Journal.” “Congress and the Constitution,” DHRC, 13: 241.
64. Washington to Madison, Oct. 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 366.
65. Maier, Ratification, p. 39.
66. Humphreys to Washington, PGW, CS 5: 343.
67. Henry Knox to George Washington, Oct. 3, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 352.
68. Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, Oct. 11, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 369.
69. James Madison to George Washington, Oct. 14, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 373 (emphasis added).
70. See GWD, Oct. 12–13, 1787, 3: 244.
71. David Humphreys to George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, Oct. 18, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 381. See also George Washington to David Humphreys, Oct. 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 366 (“In these parts of [Virginia], it is advocated beyond my expectation”).
72. Committee of Voters in Fairfax County to George Mason and David Stuart, Oct. 2, 1787, PGM, 3: 1000.
73. Washington to Madison, Oct. 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 366–67 (by “latter,” Washington meant Mason).
74. Richard Henry Lee to George Washington, Oct. 11, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 370 (speaking of his opposition to Washington over the Constitution, Lee writes, “I feel it among the first distresses that have happened to me in my life”); George Mason to George Washington, Oct. 7, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 356 (without expressly expressing regret, Mason goes out of his way to endorse at least holding a state ratifying convention). In what must have been cold encounters, Lee also visited Washington at Mount Vernon in early November and Mason’s son, George Jr., visited Washington in October. GWD, Oct. 28–29, 1787, 3: 261–62; GWD, Nov. 11–12, 1787, 3: 266.
75. Patrick Henry to George Washington, Oct. 19, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 384 (expressing lament for differing “with the opinion of those personages for whom I have the highest Reverence,” which presumably included Washington).
76. Richard Henry Lee to George Mason, Oct. 1, 1787, PGM, 3: 996.
77. Farrand, Sept. 15, 1787, 2: 632.
78. “Congress and the Constitution,” DHRC, 13: 238. For the complete first quote, see “Melancton Smith’s Notes, 27 September,” DHRC, 1: 336. Smith took the most complete notes of the debate. They are presented along with other available notes in the original shorthand form in DHRC, vol. 13, and in revised form in DHRC, vol. 1.
79. “Assembly Proceedings,” Sept. 17, 1787, DHRC, 2: 58.
80. About Pennsylvania’s representation at the Convention, minority members of the Assembly wrote, “We lamented at the time that a majority of our legislature appointed men to represent this state who were all citizens of Philadelphia, none of them calculated to represe
nt the landed [or rural] interests of Pennsylvania, and almost all of them of one political party, men who have been uniformly opposed to [the state] constitution. . . .” “The Address of the Seceding Assemblymen,” Oct. 2, 1787, DHRC, 2: 112.
81. “Assembly Debates, A.M.,” Sept. 28, 1787, DHRC, 2: 71. See also “Address of Seceding Assemblymen,” DHRC, 2: 113.
82. “Assembly Debates, A.M.,” DHRC, 2: 76.
83. “Address of Seceding Assemblymen,” DHRC, 2: 116. Washington had read the broadside within a week of its publication. On October 10, he wrote to Madison that Mason’s objections “are detailed in the address of the seceding members of the Assembly of Pennsylvania; which no doubt you have seen.” Washington to Madison, Oct. 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 367. A group depicted by some as a “mob” assisted the sergeant at arms in capturing the two seceders, James M’Calmont and Jacob Miley. At M’Calmont’s request, the attorney general attempted to prosecute the only identified member of this group, John Barry. “James M’Calmont’s Appeal,” Oct. 2, 1787–Feb. 16, 1788, DHRC, 2: 111. Barry worked for Robert Morris, which led historian Ray Raphael to suggest that Morris orchestrated the capture. See Ray Raphael, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation (New York: New Press, 2009), 464.
84. Washington to Madison, Oct. 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 367.
85. Morris to Washington, Oct. 30, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 399.
86. George Washington to Bushrod Washington, Nov. 9, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 421. In other letters from this period, Washington (like Morris) attributed much of the opposition to the Constitution to “sinister and self-important considerations” of opponents who would be adversely “affected by the change” in government. Washington to Humphreys, Oct. 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 365; Washington to Knox, Oct. 15, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 375.
87. Washington to Humphreys, Oct. 10, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 366.
88. George Washington to David Stuart, Oct. 17, 1787, PGW, CS 5: 379.
The Return of George Washington Page 35