The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (135 page)

The Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 abandoned any pretense of mixed government. The radicals believed that the people's interest was one, andany attempt to construct a government on any other assumption would deny the principles of republicanism. Thomas Paine had taught them that the structure of American society departed from Europe's. Those state constitutions which sought to balance the traditional orders of society simply ignored the important differences between Europe and America. Paine was right about society in America -- there was no heredi-

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General Assembly could not enact bills into law until after the session following their printing.
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Beside the General Assembly, the other branches of the government were weak. A president and supreme executive council made up the executive but lacked a veto on legislation, indeed lacked almost any power. The courts too were carefully limited. To guarantee further the rights of citizens, the convention inserted a bill of rights into the constitution. This part of the document was drawn almost completely from the Virginia "Declaration of Rights." Still the radicals were not satisfied. To protect the people and the constitution they devised an agency called the council of censors, modeled on the Spartan Ephori and Roman Censors, which was expected to review the government's performance every seven years. The council of censors, an elected body, might call a new convention if it thought amendments were needed.

In Pennsylvania the democratic impulse achieved a level of power unequaled elsewhere. But the expression of that power in the constitution of 1776 did not go unchallenged. Although the economy and the Bank of North America were issues in the politics of the 1780s, the constitution provided the center of division. Two factions which attained a remarkable level of organization grew up around the constitution -- its opponents, the Republicans, and its defenders, the Constitutionalists. The split between the two did not have a class basis, though each felt considerable social antagonism toward the other. The Republicans contained more businessmen, merchants trading overseas and with other colonies, than the Constitutionalists, but a variety of groups made their way into both camps. The Quakers solidly opposed the constitution, for its requirements of an oath barred them from the General Assembly, and a law imposing a similar requirement on voters passed soon after the constitution took effect disenfranchised them. The allegiances of other religious groups were less clear.

Division over a constitution did not shape politics in the remaining states in the 1780s. For the most part, these constitutions attempted to provide balanced government and at the same time to restrict executive power. More often than not the balance tilted strongly to the legislature. These constitutions all incorporated bicameralism and gave the people a strong voice in one house -- and usually in both.
The franchise remained

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tied to real property almost everywhere with most men apparently qualifying for the vote. The landless, who could not qualify, were apparently willing to defer to their landowning betters.

By 1787 the constitutional structure of most states seemed secure. Pennsylvania's democratic order was an exception, an exception that drew the attention of the men who wanted to strengthen the Union. Whatever good the experience of the states had to teach was not to be discovered in Pennsylvania, where democracy engendered strife and division. Yet a new constitution for the Confederation surely would have to found itself on the people.

The Revolution had been fought in the name of the natural rights of mankind. How much democracy did those rights require? Pennsylvania could not answer satisfactorily, and neither could Virginia.

Nor could the Articles of Confederation. They were a constitution in the most tenuous sense -- they provided fundamental law, but they did not establish a government. Under the Articles, there was no executive and there was no judiciary. By itself Congress could not do much. It could not tax; it could not regulate trade except with the Indians. It could do few of the things ordinary governments did. State and local agencies governed the American people. And the American people did not choose Congress -- state legislatures did.

By the end of the war, the inadequacy of the Articles was clear. Yet, through most of the 1780s, they could not be revised. They could not because the Americans were unable to find a way to reconcile local attachments with centralized government. One of the great strengths of the Americans -- their provincialism -- had weakened them in the war, and it paralyzed their effort to govern themselves after peace was concluded. There was also the lesson of the struggle with Britain -- that unconfined power invariably sought to destroy liberty. Action to centralize power might solve some of the problems of governance, and it might also lead to the end of American freedom.

What, then, could be done in 1787? Much had been learned since 1781. The Articles of Confederation would not do. The state constitutions, even though they embodied much political wisdom, would not do -- at least not by themselves. Something had to be done. If it were not, a confederacy of small sovereign republics, a radical institution in a world of monarchies, might collapse or be conquered.

The Constitutional Convention would have to find the answers. It needed delegates with imagination and daring. As spring came in 1787, Americans, understandably, thought about the men they had sent to Philadelphia and about what they might do there.

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention straggled into Philadelphia throughout most of May 1787. The state legislatures had not appointed delegates with undue speed, and those chosen found travel over rough roads slow and uncomfortable. May 14, the day set for the opening, came and went with only a few delegates present. Delay in getting the meeting started distressed those in the city who were committed to major reform because it suggested to them that others might not share their purposes.

The first on the scene, James Madison, the most eager for a change to a powerful central government, did not sit and suffer. He had prepared himself carefully for this meeting, and he did not mean to let the opportunity for change slip away. Madison was thirty-six years old, short of stature, with a receding hairline and a lean body. Historians sometimes describe him as an introverted little man, a classic intellectual in whom the juices of passion had dried up. His friends knew him better and their accounts confirm what his correspondence shows: he was lively and sometimes ribald, a man of passion and deep conviction. His attachments, firmly to Virginia, did not prevent him from loving the Union. Yet that love was not free of hate and fear: he hated paper money and feared the wild schemes of debtors, and most of all he feared majoritarian tyranny and its sometime offspring, anarchy. But Madison loved political liberty even more, and though he did not love the people -he had come to know them in his years of public service -- he believed that political liberty could survive in a republic only if the people were faithfully represented. Ignored or frustrated, they would continue what

they were doing when the Convention was called -- invade the rights of property. Madison had thought more about government than anyone in the Convention; he was ready for what lay ahead in the summer; and he was determined to the point of fanaticism.
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Ten days after Madison's arrival George Washington rode in, to be greeted by the ringing of bells and the shouts of admiring countrymen. Persuading Washington to come had been a near thing -- or seemed so -- for he clung to private life after eight years of exhausting service to his country. Washington's desire to remain at Mount Vernon was undoubtedly genuine, but he also wished to aid the cause of national government, The problem for him and his friends lay in his immense reputation which he, and they, protected from all possible dangers. In the end, regard for his reputation brought him to Philadelphia after he first refused appointment to the Virginia delegation. What concerned him, he wrote Henry Knox in an appeal for advice, was "whether my non-attendance in this Convention will not be considered as deriliction to republicanism, nay more, whether other motives may not (however injuriously) be ascribed to me for not exerting myself on this occasion in support of it." Knox, Madison, and Edmund Randolph all urged him to attend, although Madison had second thoughts after Washington decided to follow their counsel. Washington had more prestige than any American, and a constitution formed with his blessing would doubtless attract the approval of many of his countrymen.
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Washington brought neither a clearly formulated plan of government with him nor a well-articulated political philosophy. He had no taste for theory, but he had profound convictions about the need to strengthen the Union, convictions based on far-ranging knowledge of Americans and their institutions. He also had years of experience of working with Congress. And whatever the reasons, though his service in the Revolution must have been most important, he was an unshakable republican.

By May 17 the entire Virginia delegation had arrived. It included George Wythe, in whose office the young Jefferson studied law, a learned and wise man who was called home by his wife's illness almost immediately, John Blair, a judge, John McClurg, a doctor, and two formidable planters. They were Edmund Randolph, the governor of the state, a member of a distinguished family and a man of good ability and unpredictable judgment; the other was George Mason, Washington's neighbor

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on the Potomac, a bright sometimes cranky man whose opinions were even harder to anticipate than Randolph's despite the fact that he had written the Virginia
"Declaration of Rights"
and much of the state's constitution of 1776, both documents saturated with the principles of republican liberty.
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These men met as a delegation before the Convention commenced its work. Madison instigated their meetings in order to work out an agreement on his plan for a new government. Three among the Virginians, he knew, would be especially important in the Convention. One was George Washington, who shared Madison's desires for a national union of great power; the others were George Mason and Edmund Randolph, who were unhappy with the present government but still not certain to approve the changes he had in mind.

While the Virginians talked among themselves, other delegates drifted into Philadelphia until, on May 25, seven states were represented and the Convention opened. In a few more days the delegations were virtually complete and representatives from all the states with the exception of New Hampshire and Rhode Island were on the scene. Altogether fiftyfive men served, although several left Philadelphia before the meeting ended in September.

Who were these men and what were their backgrounds? At least thirty-four had legal training and twenty-one practiced law. There were some eighteen planters and farmers; nineteen slave owners; seven merchants and another eight, all lawyers, closely associated with commerce. Many of these men had held state offices, served in Congress, and were veterans of the Revolutionary war. This short profile suggests a gathering of solid citizens, property owners, political and social leaders, and indeed it was. There were no women at the Convention, no free blacks, and no poor men. But there were few rigid conservatives, if conservatism implies a disposition to resist change. The delegates were also still young men, mostly in their thirties and forties, with few exceptions.
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