Most important, Franklin remained eternally optimistic and enthusiastic. Only weeks before the Convention began, with Shays’s Rebellion and the problems of paper money in Rhode Island likely in mind, he wrote to other friends in France, “Our public affairs go on as well as can reasonably be expected after so great an overturning. We have had some disorders in different parts of the country, but we arrange them as they arise, and are daily mending and improving; so that I have no doubt but all will come right in time.”38 To Jefferson in Paris, he reported about the pending Convention, “The Delegates generally appointed as far as I have heard of them are Men of Character for Prudence and Ability, so that I hope Good from their Meeting.”39 Franklin wished Jefferson could be there too but carried on without him, advancing many of the positions that the younger Virginian likely would have championed.
In contrast, Franklin probably was relieved that John Adams stayed put in Europe during the Convention. The two had fallen out during their time in France and Adams had not written to Franklin for nearly a year when, early in 1787, Adams sent him unsolicited copies of his hastily written treatise on American constitutions, which the vainglorious New Englander hoped might guide the deliberations in Philadelphia. The treatise favored too much executive and senatorial power for Franklin’s taste. He sent back a bland acknowledgment only days before the Convention began in a chilly letter that reserved its warmest words for Adams’s wife and daughter.40
A lifelike portrait from the period by Charles Willson Peale shows a clear-eyed but clearly aged Franklin with a deep double chin, balding crown, bifocals, and stringy, shoulder-length hair. Heavy rain kept Franklin home on the Convention’s first day, but he never missed another session, giving him the best attendance record of any Pennsylvanian and, among all delegates, second place only to Washington and Madison, who attended every day. Beeman counts these three as the Convention’s only indispensable members.
Making the most of the delay caused by lack of a quorum, Washington, Franklin, and their fellow delegates from Virginia and Pennsylvania formulated a plan for going forward. Beeman credits Franklin’s inaugural dinner party for launching the process. “Franklin,” he wrote, “had a superb sense of the way in which good food, liquor, and conversation could lubricate the machinery of government and politics, and his dinner gathering was designed for that purpose.”41 Historian Catherine Drinker Bowen has the Virginians meeting alone in the mornings and with the Pennsylvanians each afternoon.42 Beeman does not differentiate.
The meetings between delegates from these two key states began soon after Franklin’s May 16 dinner—convening for “two or three Hours, every day,” according to Virginia delegate George Mason. This group expanded Madison’s outline for the Constitution into what became known as the Virginia Plan.43 In a letter on May 21, Mason depicted the emerging plan as “a total Change of the Federal System, and instituting a great national Council, or Parliament upon the principles of equal proportionate Representation, consisting of two Branches of the Legislature, invested with full legislative Powers upon the Objects of the Union; and to . . . establish also a national Executive; and a judiciary System.”44 In short, the draft created a true national government with a two-house legislature and a balance of powers among its branches. Assuming that the entire Pennsylvania and Virginia delegations attended some or all of these sessions, then Franklin and Washington were present at the creation of the modern American government. They certainly supported the essential plan when it came before the full convention, although Franklin favored a single-house legislature like the one in Pennsylvania, a system that later became common in northern Europe.45
ON FRIDAY, MAY 25, nearly two weeks after its scheduled start, the Convention finally gained a quorum. With just seven southern and middle states represented, the delegates could do little more than open the proceedings and prepare for future deliberations. Principally, that meant electing a presiding officer. As president of the host state, Franklin planned to nominate Washington, but this was the day that rain kept the Pennsylvanian from attending what was sure to be a largely ceremonial session. The task of nominating Washington fell to the state’s next most senior delegate, Robert Morris, who pointedly stated that he did so on behalf of his entire delegation. South Carolina’s John Rutledge seconded the nomination and urged that it be accepted unanimously. It was.
Morris and Rutledge then escorted Washington to the State Assembly Speaker’s chair: a finely carved seat with a half sun painted on its crown that would serve as the presiding officer’s perch for the convention. It stood behind a draped desk on the dais at the front of the Assembly Room.
After sitting, Washington accepted the “honor,” as he put it, of presiding, noted the “novelty” of the president’s role for him, and begged “the indulgence of the House toward the involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion.” He had not asked to preside but surely anticipated doing so. If “he felt himself embarrassed” with the honor, as he stated at the time, it was a fleeting feeling.46 Comfortable with command, Washington was better suited to direct the proceedings from in front than engage in debate from the floor.
Three more brief business items came before the Convention on that initial day. First it chose William Jackson, a former aide of Washington, as Convention secretary. This disappointed Franklin, who hoped that the post would go to his grandson Temple, who clearly would have done a better job than Jackson, who took poor notes and threw away most of the records. Then one member from each state presented the credentials for his delegation. Finally, before adjourning for the week, the Convention named a committee chaired by Washington ally George Wythe to draft standing rules for the assembly.
In presenting the credentials from his state, George Read made a point of stating that Delaware had barred its delegation from supporting any change in the policy of equal representation for every state in Congress. This caught the attention of every delegate. It appeared in all their surviving notes.47 Mason promptly wrote home, “Delaware has tied up the hands of her deputies by an express direction to retain the principle . . . of each State having the same vote.”48 An avowed federalist, Read favored a strong general government but wanted his small state to have as much say in it as any large one. His opening remark suggested that the chief question at this convention would not be if Congress received more power but rather whether Congress would represent states or people. Both Franklin and Washington backed proportional representation but that stance raised the added question: Who counts as people? Obstacles loomed ahead.
FRANKLIN MADE HIS INITIAL APPEARANCE at the Convention on Monday, May 28, along with enough delegates from Massachusetts and Connecticut to bring the total number of states represented to nine. Although the comings and goings of delegates meant that not every state remained represented at all times, the total never again dropped below eight or rose above twelve. About thirty of the seventy-five elected delegates showed up on a typical day; twenty of them never appeared. Franklin arrived on his first day by sedan chair, which likely added to his aura. “Dr. Franklin is well known to be the greatest phylosopher of the present age,” Georgia delegate William Pierce wrote from the Convention. “The very heavens obey him, and the Clouds yield up their Lightning to be imprisoned in his rod.”49
The delegates began the new week by debating draft rules proposed by Wythe’s committee. These rules placed substantial authority in Washington, as president, to manage the Convention. They also provided for the delegates to vote by state—one vote for each state as cast by a majority in its delegation—with a majority of states voting needed to pass any motion or measure.
The most significant rule did not come from the committee but was offered by South Carolina’s Pierce Butler. He moved from the floor that the Convention proceed in secret. The final rules provided that “no copy be taken of any entry on the journal” and that “nothing spoken in the House be printed, or otherwise published, or communicated without leave.”50 These rules allowed the Conventio
n to build internal consensus without outside interference. “No Constitution ever would have been adopted by the Convention if the debates had been public,” Madison later commented.51 Albeit incomplete, Madison’s extensive handwritten notes of the debates, later revised and published, provide the best record of what happened behind closed doors.52
Washington scrupulously followed the secrecy rule in public discourse and private writings. “No Com[municatio]ns without doors,” he wrote in his diary for May 29, never again disclosing details of the deliberations.53 When one delegate accidentally breached the secrecy rule by mislaying a copy of the Virginia Plan, Washington’s stern supervision of the deliberations showed itself. “I am sorry to find that some one Member of this Body, has been so neglectful of the secrets of the Convention as to drop in the State House a copy of their proceedings,” Washington lectured the delegates after another member found it. “I must entreat Gentlemen to be more careful, lest our transactions get into the News Papers, and disturb the public repose by premature speculations.” He then threw down the offending document, directed its unnamed owner to claim it, and stormed from the chamber. “It is something remarkable that no Person ever owned the Paper,” Georgia’s Pierce commented.54
WITH SHUTTERS CLOSED, observers excluded, and secrecy enforced, the main business of the Convention began on Tuesday, May 29, with Washington calling on Governor Randolph to introduce and defend the Virginia Plan, which took the form of fifteen numbered resolutions. “In a long and elaborate speech,” New York antifederalist Robert Yates reported, Randolph “candidly confessed” that the intent behind these resolutions was to create “a strong consolidated union, in which the idea of states should be nearly annihilated.”55
Yates exaggerated the plan’s intent, but not by much. Under the Articles of Confederation, each state was sovereign; the general government was not. “The State of Georgia, by the Grace of God, free, sovereign and independent,” the credentials for that state’s convention delegates stated.56 The Constitution altered this equation. Before the Constitution, for example, Georgia printed its own paper money. After ratification, it could not. Before, it could limit imports from other states. After, it could not. Before, it could maintain its own militia. After, the president could nationalize those troops. Before, the federal government could not meddle with Georgia’s peculiar institution of slavery. After . . . well, that was where federalists from Georgia and the Carolinas drew a line, and those from Virginia largely supported them. At the Convention, Franklin and Washington generally stood shoulder to shoulder on consolidating federal authority, but issues like slavery divided them and their federalist allies into camps, leading to some key compromises over federalism.
In the framing of the Constitution, the Virginia Plan constituted the federalists’ opening salvo, but it required elaboration and was subject to concessions. To forge a general government responsible for the “common defense, security of liberty and general welfare,” it gave Congress unfettered power “to legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incompetent, or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of [state] Legislation.”57 This Congress would consist of two branches, with the first elected by the people of the several states proportional to their free population or tax payments and the second chosen by the first. Congress would choose the chief executive for a single fixed term and judges for life. Congress could strike state laws for violating the Constitution and a council composed of judges and the executive could void congressional acts on the same grounds.
Franklin and Washington might quibble with bits of the Virginia Plan, but it set forth the sort of government they sought. “The business of this Convention is as yet too much in embryo to form any opinion of the result,” Washington wrote to Jefferson at this time. “That something is necessary, all will agree; for the situation of the General Governmt (if it can be called a governmt) is shaken to its foundation—and liable to be overset by every blast. In a word, it is at an end, and unless a remedy is soon applied, anarchy & confusion will inevitably ensue.”58 Yet even if all agreed that something was necessary, not everyone agreed on that something. “The players of our game are so many,” Franklin would later say about the Convention, “their ideas so different, their prejudices so strong and so various, and their particular interests independent of the general seeming so opposite, that not a move can be made that is not contested.”59 A passionate chess player, Franklin concluded that at times the moves and countermoves of the delegates in Philadelphia “confound the understanding.”60
IN ADDITION TO countless lesser addendums and alterations, turning the Virginia Plan into the framed Constitution required three major compromises or innovations, each of which engaged Franklin and Washington. Foremost among these, the so-called Great Compromise restructured Congress to have a proportionally representative, popularly elected House of Representatives (like the lower branch of many state assemblies) and a Senate with equal representation from each state (akin to the confederation Congress but with its state-appointed members serving fixed terms). Although Franklin personally favored a popularly elected unicameral legislature, he foresaw the final compromise from the outset and did as much as anyone to broker it.
While a majority of delegations supported proportional representation for Congress, a determined minority, mostly from small states, demanded equal representation and threatened to scuttle any deal without it. Although in theory a mere quorum of the delegations could proceed, and a mere majority of that quorum could frame a constitution, every delegate knew that any working general government would need to include all of the large states—slave and free—and most of the small ones. The United States might get along without Rhode Island, which did not attend the Convention, but it would not be the United States without Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and most of the rest. They held leverage at the Convention and, motivated by some mix of high ideals and self-interest, they used it.
Seeking middle ground on the issue of representation in Congress, delegates from the midsized state of Connecticut offered the obvious compromise of proportional representation in Congress’s lower house and equal representation in the Senate, but such a mishmash only slowly won out.61 A fight over principle with practical implications, the contest over representation was not finally resolved until late July.
After simmering for weeks, the floor debate erupted into a verbal brawl on Saturday, June 30. “Can we forget for whom we are forming a Government? Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called States?” Pennsylvania’s James Wilson asked from a large-state viewpoint.62 He objected to a majority of the states having power to set the nation’s course when those states contained a minority of its people and wealth: they could easily abuse their power through how they imposed taxes. Others saw their rights and welfare flowing from the states and did not want to disenfranchise them. Arguing from the small-state perspective, New Jersey’s Jonathan Dayton dismissed Connecticut’s proposed compromise as “an amphibious monster” that his people would never accept.63
Taking the measure of both sides in his folksy, pragmatic way, Franklin now broke with his state to argue in favor of the compromise. “If a proportional representation takes place, the small States contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States say their money will be in danger,” he stated. Noting that “we are all met to do something,” Franklin urged the Convention to act like a carpenter who, when framing a table from two planks of uneven parts, “takes a little from both, and makes a good joint.”64
At this point, some large-state delegates wanted to call the bluff of those demanding equal representation. “If a minority should refuse their assent to the new plan of a general government,” Wilson asserted, it could not happen on better grounds.65 Madison agreed. Gunning Bedford of Delaware shot back, “The Large States dare not dissolve the confederation. If they do the small ones will find
some foreign ally . . . who will take them by the hand and do them justice.” Turning to the large-state delegates, he said with emphasis, “I do not, gentleman, trust you.”66 The Convention adjourned for the day in disarray with a vote on the compromise scheduled for Monday, July 2, 1787.
WATCHING THIS DEBATE FROM THE CHAIR, Washington nearly lost hope. Only three weeks earlier, he had written privately to his nephew George, “The sentiments of the different members seem to accord more than I expected they would,” but now he doubted it.67 On Sunday, Washington conferred with Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur and Robert Morris. According to an early account of that meeting, all three were dejected by the “deplorable state of things at the Convention.” They complained of conflicting opinions “obstinately adhered to” and members threatening to leave. “At this alarming crisis,” the account noted, “a dissolution of the Convention was hourly to be apprehended.”68 Firmly in the large-state camp, Washington favored proportional representation in Congress but, like Franklin, was now willing to take from both sides to save the middle.
On July 2, when delegates finally voted on the so-called Connecticut Compromise, the Convention deadlocked: five to five with one state split. Virginia and Pennsylvania voted no. Declaring “we are now a full stop,” Connecticut’s Roger Sherman backed a motion to commit the matter to a committee, where cooler heads might prevail. Led by Madison and Wilson, many large-state delegates spoke against the move but, perhaps influenced by his meeting with Washington, Gouverneur Morris endorsed it, as did Washington’s Virginia ally Edmund Randolph. The motion passed with Virginia and Pennsylvania voting yes.69 The delegates then stacked the committee with moderates like Franklin from large states and hard-liners like Bedford from small ones. The committee’s outcome was predetermined by its composition.
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