Who were the fifty-five men who, in varying degrees, were the framers of our National Constitution? The knowledge concerning some of them is indefinite, but the following facts are substantially correct. All of them except eight were natives of the colonies. Franklin, the oldest, was 81; Dayton, the youngest, was 26; fourteen were 50 or over; twenty-one were less than 40. Twenty-five were college men. Eighteen had been officers in the Continental army, of whom ten were in the Society of the Cincinnati. One had been a British army officer before the Revolution. Thirty-four of them were lawyers, or men who had at least studied the law, some of them trained at the Middle Temple in London; of these six had been or were to be state attorney generals, five chief justices of the state supreme courts, four chancellors, three national judges, and five justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom one was to be chief justice and another after a term as associate justice was to be rejected for the higher office by the Senate. Eight of the deputies were merchants or financiers. Six of them were planters, while others were planters in addition to legal or other activities. There were three physicians and two former ministers of the gospel, several college professors and one present and one future college president. The Fourth Estate was represented by Benjamin Franklin. These men were almost without exception acquainted with public affairs: forty-six had been members of one or both of the houses of the colonial or state legislatures; ten attended state constitutional conventions; sixteen had been or were to be governors or presidents of states. In national affairs forty-two were delegates to the Continental Congress, eight were signers of the Declaration of Independence, six signers of the draft of the Articles of Confederation, seven had attended the Annapolis Convention, and three had been executive officers under the Congress. Thirteen were to be congressmen and nineteen national senators, one territorial governor, four members of the President's Cabinet. One had been a minister abroad and seven more were to be later. Two future Presidents of the United States took a prominent part in the proceedings of the convention and one future Vice President. Two others were to be candidates for the highest office in the land and these and one other, candidates for the Vice Presidency. The positions which these men had occupied or were later to fill are indicative of the regard in which they were held by their fellow citizens, and of their character and worth. The most important man in the convention was George Washington; indeed, his acceptance of the deputyship, made reluctantly and after long consideration, was the initial triumph of the movement DELEGATES 17 and a foreshadowing of success, so great was his prestige. Madison and Randolph, his fellow deputies from Virginia, were very active in the work of the convention; and Wythe and Mason, older men, added the weight of their knowledge and experience as prominent participants in earlier affairs. Madison's great knowledge of political science, the fact that to him more than to any other deputy public life was a profession, and his grasp of the essential problems before the convention and the means by which they could be solved, enabled him to become the principal architect of the Constitution. Franklin was the seer of the convention. His great age and infirmities forbade very active participation, and he was probably responsible for little of the detailed results; but his very presence gave the gathering importance and dignity and his advice must have been eagerly sought and carefully considered. He and Washington were the two great harmonizers. Washington presided over the formal sessions, taking little part in the debate, but in committee of the whole and in the private conferences which were such an important underpinning of the formal structure as it arose, he was in constant consultation with his colleagues. Also, as the character of the plan developed, there was a general recognition of the fact that he must be a leading man in the early operation of the new government, and this of necessity influenced its shape. It is not possible here to do more than mention the other most prominent men of the convention. In the reflection of his later fame much influence has been attributed to Alexander Hamilton. This, however, was not the case. His ideas of central power were too extreme; he was hindered by the reactionary character of his two colleagues, and he was also absent during half of the convention. His great services came later. In the ratification contest and the successful operation of the new government his work was masterful. Gouverneur Morris, brilliant and cogent debater and firm believer in a national system, was responsible for the final very apt wording of the Constitution. James Wilson, leader in law and political theory, ably seconded Madison's efforts, especially in details. Roger Sherman, from small but progressive Connecticut, was a signer of the documents of the First Congress, the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution; and Oliver Ellsworth was his lawyer colleague. Gerry and King of Massachusetts were Harvard graduates, the one fluctuating in his attitude and the other a calm thinker and careful speaker, an advocate of an efficient system with due consideration of the rights of the states. William Paterson of New Jersey, John Dickinson of Delaware, and Luther Martin of Maryland, were prominent as small state leaders, bent upon the preservation of the equality of the states. Martin was from the beginning an opponent of anything other than amendment of the Articles of Confederation, and continued implacable. John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Pierce Butler of South Carolina saw the need of a completely new system, but were also eager to preserve the advantage of the slave system then dominating the economic conditions of the lower South. Charles Pinckney, one of the youngest men in the convention, was especially forceful in his advocacy of a workable "American System" for the nation whose future growth he clearly envisioned. ORGANIZATION THE CONVENTION was called for the second Monday in May 1787, which was the 14th, and Washington arrived at Philadelphia, prompt as always, on the day before, when, as he said in his diary, "the bells were chimed." There was, however, not the necessary quorum until the 25th, when seven states were represented. Before the end of the month ten states were present and voting. Maryland participated on June 2, but New Hampshire, the twelfth state, was not on hand until July 23, and New York was not voting after July 10. The meeting was held in Independence Hall, where the Congress had sat and where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and signed. Little time was wasted in organization. Washington was the unanimous choice for president. The voting was by the prevailing system of one state, one vote; and complete secrecy was ordered in accordance with the rule, often violated, of the Continental Congress. Most of the credentials merely voiced the purpose of the assembly as given by the resolution of the Continental Congress to provide effectual means to remedy the defects of the Confederation; but the Delaware members were forbidden to amend the right of each state to one vote. On the other hand, South Carolina wished the central authority to be "entirely adequate to the actual situation and future good government." Delaware's warnings were preliminary notes of discord that later reached full development in the main theme. Thus began the meetings of one of the greatest sessions of wise men in the history of the world. But these meetings were so secret that the president would not give any hint concerning them even in the intimacy of his private diary. There was a formal journal kept, but except for its list of motions and votes, it is the least important of the ORGANIZATION 19 records which have come down to us. Far surpassing it and all other sources combined were the notes on the debates kept by Madison, notes that were not made public as a whole until 1840. Thus he doubled the debt the nation owes him for his work in the formation of the national government, and later he added still further to the obligation by his energetic participation in the ratification contest and in the organization of the government. Various other members made notes that occasionally add to the knowledge derived from Madison, or throw light upon the position of members. None of these, however, cover the whole proceedings, the Yates notes being the most extensive next to Madison's. There were meetings on eighty-seven or eighty-eight days of the one hundred sixteen between May 25 and September 17, inclusive. Of these meetings we have more or less knowledge, but of the work under the surface, of the special committee meetings and of the private discussions, we have scarcely anything, and most of this through the unreliable form of later recollection. Yet it was here, in the give and take of informal gatherings, that inuch of the real work was done. THE VIRGINIA PLAN ON MAY 29, the convention having been organized, Randolph "opened the main business" by introducing the "Virginia Plan." This plan, drafted by Madison, had been submitted by him in outline to Washington on April 16, and was later worked up in preliminary meetings of the Virginia delegation of seven members. It provided for apportioned representation, a legislature of two houses, the lower house elected by the people, the upper one elected by the lower. The legislature was to have all the legislative powers of the Continental Congress, and also "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 individual Legislation; to negative all laws passed by the several States, contravening in the opinion of the National Legislature the articles of Union; and to call forth the force of the Union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof." There was to be a national executive and a national judiciary, with a council of revision formed out of them which should have a conditional veto on national legislation and also on the national legislature's negative of state acts. The central power was to guarantee a republican form of government and its territory to each state. Provisions for the admission of new states were included, and provisions for amendment without "the assent of the National Legislature." Also state officers should be "bound by oath to support the articles of Union." Ratification of the proposed changes was to be by Congress and state conventions. This was the germ of the Constitution of the United States. For its form it went back to practices of colonial and state governments; for its powers to the lessons of wartime and later experiences. It gave the central government coercive power over the state governments, while it guaranteed their continued existence. Since it made no provision for operation through the state governments, it contained the idea of direct action on the people, and the great "law of the land" principle was foreshadowed. This was far more than a mere amendment of the Articles of Confederation and entirely contrary to the instructions given the delegates from Delaware. It was a largestate proposal. Charles Pinckney also introduced a plan, the text of which has not come down to us, but probable extracts and an outline exist. Its general character was similar to the Virginia plan and its influence upon the final draft seems to have been considerable. The next thirteen meetings were in committee of the whole upon the Virginia plan. To enforce the idea of this plan three resolutions, urged by Gouverneur Morris, were introduced, declaring that a federal (that is, confederate) union of individual sovereigns was not sufficient; that a "national Government ought to be established consisting of a supreme Legislative, Executive, & Judiciary." The report which the committee of the whole made to the convention on June 13 was a development of the Virginia plan, with changes that gave the election of the upper house of the national legislature to the state legislatures; made the executive consist of a single individual, and gave him alone the provisional veto. THE PATERSON PLAN MEANWHILE, the deputies who feared a strong central government and were concerned with the preservation of the power of the states had been devising an alternative plan, which was introduced by Paterson of New Jersey on June 15. This merely added to the powers of Congress the right to levy an impost and to regulate foreign and interstate commerce. It authorized a plural executive and a federal judiciary. It made the acts of Congress and the treaties with foreign powers "the supreme law of the respective States so far forth as those Acts or Treaties shall relate to the said States or their |