Prof: Before we begin, I have to make a true
confession to you, my class, because you're my
class, and I have been confessing things all semester
but this is-- I basically set myself up for
this failure and then realized-- at the end of the class someone
came up to me and asked me a question,
and then I realized--Gaa! Okay.
So remember how I told you how at UVA for five straight years I
forgot Thomas Jefferson's birthday, even though everything
closed?
Yeah.
Guess what I didn't say on Tuesday?
I forgot it was Thomas Jefferson's birthday.
[laughter] I completely forgot.
Someone came up at the end and said,
"Well, in honor of Jefferson's birthday we did the
following"-- and I was like [laughs].
So it's good to know that I'm really consistently a horrible
UVA grad [laughter] who always forgets Thomas
Jefferson's birthday.
It must be a Hamiltonian mental block [laughter]
that I--it is not possible for me to keep that date in my head.
Anyway, I at least wanted to say, happy birthday,
Thomas Jefferson.
So now, officially, I'm a little late,
but he'll get over it--so anyway [laughter]
I've confessed to you.
I feel much better now.
Okay.
So today we turn to the Constitution.
In the last few lectures and in today's lecture basically we've
been looking at the new nation figure out its shape and form,
right?--what kind of a nation is this going to be.
As people were discovering throughout the 1780s,
it was one thing to protest against things that you didn't
like in a government, as the Americans had during the
Revolution.
It was quite another thing to come up with an alternative,
to come up with something better and then to get others to
agree.
Today's lecture, I'm sorry--Tuesday's lecture
discussed part of this process of figuring out the shape and
form of the new nation.
So we looked at the Mount Vernon Conference,
we looked at the Annapolis Convention,
and we--in doing that, we're looking at a gradual
process that was unfolding one step at a time with no
inevitable outcome.
So basically, what we saw on Tuesday was how
the Americans were basically backing their way into what
would become the Constitutional Convention.
So it's not as though everyone said, "Hey,
we need a new constitution and it's got to be stronger.
Let's go." Right?
They're--It's a process at which people are really figuring
things out as they go.
And today I want to stress that same message:
that the Constitution was not inevitable.
And I know that's obvious on the one hand,
but on the other hand, it's so ingrained in us,
I think, to think that it's a great idea that of course would
happen sooner or later, that I feel the need at the
outset of the lecture to say this,
that obviously it was not inevitable.
We think to ourselves: well, of course the
Articles--what a goofy government the Articles of
Confederation was; of course they've got to come
up with something better; of course it's going to be
stronger; of course it's going to end up
looking like our Constitution.
And obviously the problem with that whole river of "of
courses" is that if you travel down that
stream you miss one of the most important aspects of the process
of creating the Constitution, and that is that it was a
process, that it was a debate.
It was a national debate during which people really seriously
considered what they were doing, what the implications were of
what they were doing, and they did not all agree on
what was a good or bad idea.
So the process, the fact that there actually
was a debate, is significant.
And it's not a process that was entirely disconnected from the
Revolution.
The things that Americans had been yelling about during the
Revolution--right?--they talked in a variety of different ways
about liberties; they talked in a variety of
different ways about rights--that wasn't just
rhetoric.
People were truly arguing about and defending specific
fundamental rights and privileges that they felt they
deserved as British subjects, and of course the end result
about that fight was the Revolution.
So now we're years later, and we're looking at arguments
over a new form of government, and some of these same things
are being yelled about.
So, as you're going to see in the course of today's lecture,
in one way or another people are still fretting about sort of
what they consider to be fundamental liberties,
basic rights.
People considered these things to be the legacy of the
Revolution and they didn't want to give them away before they'd
even really begun to enjoy them.
So think back for a minute--many moons ago;
it's so long ago in the semester--but think back to when
we were talking about the vote for independence,
and I mentioned Pauline Maier's book.
And I talked about how in her book she has a chapter in which
she talks about the other declarations of independence,
and she really shows how on a local level people were getting
together and debating as groups in towns,
in counties: what do you think about
independence and should we actually support this?--
that that was actually a real debate.
And what I'm talking about here, what I will be talking
about over the course of this lecture,
it's a similar process of debate in which people
throughout the country were really trying to figure
something out.
They knew it was a major decision.
They were hoping whatever was going to happen was going to be
a smart decision, but it's an actual debate.
And along these lines, as you'll see by the end of
today's lecture, this is not the kind of lecture
in which I'm going to give you this deep textual analysis of
the Constitution.
Basically, I've got this lecture and a little bit of the
next lecture to talk about the Constitution.
I'm sure the Founders are spinning in their graves like:
"what, forty-five minutes to give to
the Constitution?"-- but that's where we are in the
semester.
Given that I only have that amount of time,
what I really want to focus on is the process of creating the
Constitution, and in doing that I'm also
going to talk about a handful of ongoing controversies that we
have seen before during the Revolution in an earlier part of
this course, and we're going to see them
again toward the end of this lecture when we focus on some of
the main areas that became controversies for the
Constitutional Convention.
Now I think in the same way that we have all these "of
courses"-- of course we know what's going
to happen, it's the Constitution--I think
it's also easy for us to walk down the "of course"
trail when we think about nationalists like James Madison
or Alexander Hamilton.
On some sort of basic level, we assume well,
they're right, right?
They're the smart guys; they're right,
and anyone who is against them is sort of a shortsighted,
limited-minded person who clearly isn't thinking on a
broad, smart level.
Right?
I think almost instinctively because we think what we think
about our Constitution, we think that way about whoever
supported it or did not.
Now certainly, these nationalists felt like
they were vindicating the Revolution, right?
So if you'd asked them, they would have told you that
they felt they were preserving the achievements of the
Revolution; they were fending off chaos and
a variety of other things that would defeat what had been won
in the Revolution.
And from our vantage point, we can look back,
we see that, and that makes sense,
but this wasn't the only argument that was circulating at
the time.
So even before the Constitutional Convention met,
people had valid fears about what might result from it,
and they were fears that were strong enough that some people
didn't even think their states should participate in the
Convention.
Never mind arguing about ratification.
I'm backing us way up.
There were many people who just thought: 'I don't want to--I
don't think our state should participate in this whole idea
of revising the government.'
In some way or another, some people feared that
strengthening the national government was a kind of
counterattack against everything that the Revolution had meant.
And I want to give you a sense of the flavor of this debate,
this actually sort of pre-Convention debate in which
the states are figuring out what to do,
and I'm going local again.
Right?
I sort of--To give you a sense of on-the-ground reality during
the Revolution, I went local when I talked
about the invasion of New Haven.
So for just a couple minutes here I want to go local again
and just give you a flavor of the debate that was going on
here in Connecticut after the Confederation Congress had
passed a resolution saying: okay,
we think that the states should select delegates to send them to
this Convention that's going to happen to revise the articles.
Right?
They're not saying, 'Go destroy the Articles'--but
they are saying, 'Okay.
Revising the Articles might be okay'--and once the
Confederation Congress makes that resolution,
the states now debate what to do.
So on May 12,1787, the Connecticut legislature
began debating whether Connecticut should send
delegates to this proposed Convention to meet in
Philadelphia that was coming up in a couple of--
was coming up very soon as a matter of fact.
Now most newspapers that reported on what happened
explicitly mentioned four members of the Connecticut House
who came forward and declared that they were opposed to
sending delegates to the Convention.
All of these men were from small towns near the
Massachusetts border.
And all of them in one way or another warned that sending a
delegate to this Convention would endanger the liberties and
privileges of Americans.
So Elijah Fitch--I love the fact that their names are
preserved-- Elijah Fitch said the
Convention might end up abridging the people's
privileges by creating some kind of a big,
unjust, centralized government that just wouldn't consider the
individual person at all.
Daniel Perkins said that the men who probably would be named
as delegates to this supposed Convention would probably be a
bunch of rich, aristocratic-type men who
wouldn't understand or care about the problems of the
average person in Connecticut, never mind the poor of
Connecticut.
So Perkins thought, whatever comes out of this
Convention is bound to just ruin the poor;
it's going to be some weird, aristocratic decision.
Hosea Humphrey said that the Convention would probably
somehow or other take away the rights of Connecticut to protest
against things, to veto things;
somehow or other it's going to be more centralized,
so Connecticut is going to lose power in this equation.
And the fourth representative, named Abraham Granger,
was particularly straightforward.
He said, he knew that his constituents didn't want
delegates to be sent to this Convention and he represented
them, so first of all, there it was.
He had no choice; he had to just do what they
wanted him to do and say, 'No, we should not send
delegates to the Convention,' but he added,
he agreed with them.
He actually thought that this Convention was a bad idea,
and he stated specifically, the reason why he didn't like
the whole idea of a Convention was probably it would end up
creating a monarchy, and then we'd be right back to
where we were before.
So all of these men, either directly or by
implication, clearly they're rejecting the
idea that the Union or Connecticut is in such horrible
shape that something must be done;
we need a new government.
They're not traveling down that trail.
Granger actually in the course of his remarks explicitly said
that the Confederation Congress had plenty of power;
the Articles of Confederation joined with Connecticut's own
constitution would be just fine for the people of Connecticut.
Implied in some of the comments of what these men said is the
idea that anything could happen at this Convention,
and obviously that's something I've talked about before in this
course as well, but you can hear it underlying
a lot of their comments.
Who knows what's going to come out of this Convention?
Anything could happen and odds are whatever happens,
some fundamental American privileges and rights are going
to be taken away, potentially by a bunch of
wealthy, aristocratic guys who are going to be the ones
standing in that room in Philadelphia debating.
So they're basically imagining the Convention's going to be a
bunch of aristocrats who are going to subvert a popular
revolution and maybe even just toss the new country right back
into a monarchical form of government.
So those are the four people who at least the newspapers
noted as really standing forth against the Convention.
Now of course, the newspapers also reported on
nine men who spoke in favor of attending the Convention.
All of them were from commercial areas.
They all argued, as you would expect them to
argue, that the well-being of the
Union and the well-being of the state of Connecticut really,
really required a stronger central government.
One of these nine even brought up an embarrassing example of
how powerless the Congress was that involved Connecticut.
He said, 'You know, recently, the Confederation
Congress asked the states, including Connecticut,
that they requisition money from us,
and we just decided we didn't feel like giving them any,
and they couldn't do anything.
Remember?
[laughs] They asked us for something and
we said no and that was the end of that.
Remember, guys?
Oh, that's like a sign; they don't have power because
we watched them not have power when we just said no.'
And he--this one delegate went on to say, 'Well,
what about--Think about it.
That's not even a problem.
What about problems to come?
What if the Union begins to disintegrate?
What if the Union is invaded?
What would the Confederation Congress be able to do about
problems like that?'
So obviously in the end, it's that kind of an argument
that wins out and Connecticut voted to send delegates to the
Convention, but obviously also not without
a real debate.
So even participating in the Convention was a big deal that
required serious debate, and we haven't even gotten to
ratification yet.
As a matter of fact, it was such a big deal that one
state, the state of Rhode
Island--Rhode Island is consistent throughout my entire
class-- Rhode Island decided not to
attend.
They actually just decided: no, we're not participating,
we're not going.
So there were actually only twelve states represented at the
Constitutional Convention.
Rhode Island was a holdout.
So clearly, so serious that one state is just not there.
So ultimately twelve states sent delegates to the Federal
Convention.
And I should add here, just to not confuse you,
sometimes I know I'm saying Federal Convention and sometimes
I'm saying Constitutional Convention,
and they're two ways of referring to the same thing.
Some historians say Federal Convention because if you think
about it, every state could have a
constitutional convention but there can actually be maybe,
hopefully one Federal Convention, but you can use
either one.
You have my full permission to call it either the
Constitutional Convention or the Federal Convention.
So twelve states sent delegates to the Federal Convention.
It met between May and September of 1787.
Rhode Island obviously, as I said, was not there.
From those twelve states, fifty-five delegates attended
the Convention in all.
And I suppose, as you might expect,
overall they were well-educated men.
A lot of them were trained as lawyers.
A lot of them had experience working in their state
governments.
A good number of them had experience serving in either the
Continental Congresses or the Confederation Congress.
Now that said, this doesn't mean that these
were sort of professional politicians sitting down to
write a constitution.
It's not as though they've prepared their lives for this
moment.
They're people who've been involved in public life but they
certainly have not been training to sit down and create an entire
constitution for a whole country,
so despite that experience, which I'm sure served them
well, it does not suggest that they
actually are just ready to go.
They're not entirely sure what's going to happen.
Now in some ways, these delegates were kind of a
self-selecting group, because people who were really
dead set against the idea of strengthening the national
government basically just didn't go to the Convention.
The problem with that strategy is--on the part of certainly the
people who didn't like this whole idea--
by not being there, they made it easy to achieve a
consensus among the people who were there who were a little
more comfortable with strengthening the national
government.
Most of the people who were there in one way or another
ended up being nationalists in some form,
and by nationalists I actually don't just mean the James
Madisons of the world.
There's a pretty wide spectrum of people thinking about the
fact that the national government needs to be stronger
and some of them, Hamilton, Madison,
extremo nationalists, others not so much--there's a
pretty wide range-- and there were some people at
the Convention who weren't even necessarily comfortable with a
great amount of increased strength and did not end up
signing the Constitution.
So I'm not saying everyone there is a firm nationalist.
But the really firm, I suppose you'd call them at
this moment anti-nationalists, didn't go for the most part.
So since they were not there, it meant that there was a
certain sort of fundamental level of agreement at the
Convention.
Now two of the delegates there were particularly well known,
and to people who were wondering what the heck was
going on in Philadelphia, the presence of these two men
made a big difference.
George Washington.
George Washington was there.
George Washington ended up presiding over the Convention,
which ended up being a pretty important move.
I've already talked in past lectures about how he gained the
trust of everybody by continually surrendering power,
so he's already a legend in his time,
but also he's a trusted leader.
So certainly having him there gave a certain status to
whatever was going on, meant that it was important,
and meant that it was something that was being treated
responsibly because George Washington had invested it with
his presence.
Benjamin Franklin also attended.
Again he's another man in this period that--an American who had
an international reputation.
I've talked a little bit about him as well,
and like Washington his presence there suggested that
whatever the heck was going on in Philadelphia,
it was important and it had some major support.
The fact that these two men were there was significant.
This is not the reason why he was there,
but I also am always happy when anyone is anywhere who has a
sense of humor, so Franklin had one,
and it's always good to have the guy with a sense of humor at
any large meeting of men who have important things to say.
So for that reason I personally am happy that Benjamin Franklin
was there.
Now as I suggested on Tuesday, Madison also played a major
role, and I talked at the end of
Tuesday's lecture about his amazing notes that he recorded
partly thinking ahead to posterity.
His notes ended up being even more significant because it was
agreed at the start of the Convention that its proceedings
would be kept entirely secret.
The logic of that being that if it was really,
really kept entirely secret, the people who were there would
feel free to really speak their minds.
They really wanted an open, full, honest debate,
so if people there really believed that the public would
not know what they were saying, someone for example might feel
free to stand up and say, 'I personally would like a
monarchy.'
Right?
If people thought the public was watching,
no one's going to utter the "m"-word at the
Constitutional Convention, but if it's really secret,
the idea was it would allow for much more open and free and
potentially useful debate.
And there's actually--I can't resist.
There's actually a story about the secrecy of the Federal
Convention which I will offer you because it's also a George
Washington-- yet another George Washington
story.
I can't resist it.
And it's actually--it really is a way of showing how important
people at the time considered the idea of keeping the
Convention secret.
And it's from the notes of a delegate who was there at the
convention and his name is William Pierce.
And supposedly at some point in the Convention,
somebody found a page of notes about the proceedings on the
floor of the state house and brought this up to George
Washington and said, "Somebody lost these."
Okay.
So Washington takes the lost notes and at the end of that
day's session he stands up and he says,
"Before we adjourn--" I'll read his precise words:
"Gentlemen, 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, which by accident was picked up
and delivered to me this Morning.
I must entreat Gentlemen to be more careful,
lest our premature speculations disturb the public repose by
getting into the newspapers.
I know not whose paper it is,"
and then he said "but there it is,"
and he sort of threw it down on the table and added,
"Let him who owns it take it."
And according to Pierce, he bowed, picked up his hat and
left the room, quote, "with a dignity so
severe that every Person seemed alarmed."
Okay, the power of George.
Right?
He just sort of threw his weight around and everyone's
like: uh oh.
So Pierce writes that immediately everyone started
checking their pockets and their notes, like: 'I really hope
those are not my notes; please don't be my notes.'
Pierce says to his horror he discovered that his were lost,
so he kind of goes up to the front of the room,
and he kind of peeks at the notes and he's really relieved
to discover: they're not mine.
Okay.
That means that his notes are lost;
[laughter] that means two people's notes
are lost.
And Pierce then later says that he remembered,
oh, yeah, I left them in my coat pocket in the boarding
house where I'm staying-- and he found them and got them
and hopefully everything was okay.
But I love the fact that he's really relieved like:
oh, good, at least those aren't my notes;
they're someone else's really lost notes.
And according to Pierce, Washington's reprimand was so
off-putting that nobody ever claimed the piece of paper.
[laughter] It will just stay there,
[laughs] the scary piece of paper.
So obviously Madison's notes are important also partly
because this was very secret, but of course,
as I hinted at the very end of Tuesday's lecture,
what's particularly significant about Madison's role in the
Convention is his creation of a plan of government which
ultimately is known as the Virginia Plan.
Madison arrived at the Convention with a plan of
government in hand, so in a sense he immediately
set the terms of debate.
It was a really strategic move--and I'll add at this point
that when you go off in to the future and have wonderful jobs
that in one way or another will require you to have committee
meetings of various sorts, the little lesson,
the life lesson that James Madison teaches us here is,
if you set the agenda of the meeting,
you set the terms of debate and you make it much more likely
that you win.
Right?
So remember James Madison down the road in your professional
lives.
He really does something very brilliant strategically by
walking in and regardless of what is going to happen--
he doesn't know what's going to happen,
but he literally at least started out by setting the terms
of debate.
Now he may have devised this plan of government,
but given that people already knew he was sort of an extreme
nationalist, he wisely decided he would not
stand up and present this plan himself,
thinking--and probably rightly so--that if he stood up and made
a recommendation, some people would immediately
distrust it as coming from some kind of an extreme nationalist.
So instead, he asked fellow Virginia delegate Edmund
Randolph to present the plan.
And Randolph was popular and Randolph was influential and
unlike Madison Randolph was also a good public speaker so it was
a wise choice.
So on May 29, just a few days after the
Convention opened, Randolph stood up and very
diplomatically and very gently opened the subject of altering
the Articles of Confederation.
Though, as you're about to see, what he ends up suggesting is
not altering the Articles.
So first he reviewed the weaknesses of the Articles,
and then he proposed a series of resolutions,
the first one intended to just calm the nervous down and sort
of put people off guard: nothing scary is happening
here.
So he first says, "Resolved,
that the Articles of Confederation ought to be so
corrected and enlarged as to accomplish the objects proposed
by their institution; namely common defense,
security of liberty, and general welfare."
So Randolph there says he's proposing to correct and enlarge
the Articles.
What followed that statement was a rather radical plan of
government that was not a correction of the Articles.
Instead it pretty much proposed to demolish the Articles and
create in their place a strong national government that would
be grounded not on the individual states,
but instead on the people themselves.
This plan of government--the Virginia Plan is ultimately what
it's called--proposed that the new government would have three
branches.
The first would be a bicameral legislature.
The lower house would be elected by the people.
The upper house would be selected by the lower house from
candidates named by state legislatures.
The legislature would have the power to nullify any state law
contrary to the Constitution, and representation--as I
mentioned-- in the lower house is based on
population.
The second branch was the national executive.
In the Virginia Plan, the executive would have a
qualified veto over acts of Congress.
The plan didn't specify whether the executive would be a single
individual or a committee.
People talked about both.
The term of office wasn't specified either.
And then obviously, the third branch was the
national judiciary, which would consist of one or
more supreme judges and some inferior courts,
to be chosen by the national legislature to hold office
during good behavior.
So I'll repeat that: Bicameral legislature;
lower house elected by the people;
upper house selected by the lower house from candidates
named by state legislatures; the legislature can nullify any
state law that violates the Constitution;
representation is based on population.
Branch two is the executive who has a qualified veto over acts
of Congress, and it's not specified--one
person, many people,
how long you should be in office.
And then the third branch, the judiciary,
with one or more supreme judges chosen by the national
legislature holding office during good behavior.
The Virginia Plan also included a flexible amendment process and
a procedure for the admission of new states.
Now, as you can hear there, the basic outline of the final
Constitution is kind of sitting there in that plan.
A sort of fundamental frame of what's coming in the next few
months is contained within the Virginia Plan.
So from the start of the Convention,
things look a little auspicious for the nationalists,
and sure enough relatively early on in the Convention
there's a vote that a new national government ought to be
established and it should have a supreme legislative,
executive, and judiciary branch.
Now that's a pretty major thing to decide.
It's a pretty major victory for people who are really firm
nationalists; that, okay, the Convention now
has committed to setting up a supreme central government with
three branches.
And some more nationalist victories followed.
So for example, the Confederation decided that
the executive would be one man after debating this for a
while-- and I'll talk a little bit more
about this toward the end of the lecture--
but they ultimately decided that one man should be the
executive, and clearly,
in a world where you're scared of centralized power and
thinking about kings, that's a big decision.
And then they began to discuss representation in the lower
house of the legislature, and I'm also going to come back
to representation in a few minutes.
But for now I'll simply state the obvious,
which is: of course this debate broke down--
as this debate always breaks down--into small states versus
large states, small states not liking the
idea of having representation be based on population,
large states being perfectly happy with that idea.
And small states had a good reason to fear that their
influence would just be eliminated in some degree if
everything is based on population.
So on June 15, William Patterson of New Jersey
proposed his own plan, which becomes the New Jersey
Plan--it's another New Jersey moment,
the New Jersey Plan--and of course this is a plan that's
much more popular among small-state representatives.
The New Jersey Plan suggested a one-house legislature in which
obviously each state would have one vote.
There would be a plural executive--so an executive
consisting of more than one person--
who would be elected by the Congress,
and a supreme court chosen by the executive.
Now you can see how in some ways that there are little
vestiges of the Articles sitting there in that plan:
there's a unicameral legislature;
each state has one vote.
Even so, even though this is supposedly a less centralized,
less scary alternative to the Virginia Plan,
still it is giving more power to the national government than
the Articles had done.
Three days later, someone successfully moved to
postpone consideration of the New Jersey Plan and instead
consider simply revising the Articles.
You can imagine the sort of "uh"
going around the room: oh, no.
Now at this point, Alexander Hamilton stood up and
made a dramatic move.
On June 18, he made what some describe as a six-hour speech--
I can't imagine giving or listening to a six-hour speech--
in which he proposed his plan of government,
which as you'll hear, is really, really,
really, really centralized and national.
Basically, Hamilton's plan reduced the states to
administrative subdivisions.
Each would have a supreme executive appointed by the
national government; a chief executive elected for
life during good behavior, elected by electors who were
popularly chosen.
Okay.
How removed can we get the people [laughs]
from the process of choosing the executive?
Hamilton also proposed a senate chosen for life during good
behavior and an executive with absolute veto power.
Okay.
That's way out there in scary land.
You can imagine--he gives a six-hour speech and that's what
he comes up with.
He also during the speech praised the British government
as the best government on the face of the earth.
Right?
[laughter] That's Hamilton.
So basically Hamilton never lives down this speech.
As a delegate later put it, Hamilton's dramatic speech was
"praised by everybody, but supported by none."
[laughs] It was like: thank you; you can sit down now.
And it really did haunt him to the end of his days because it
seemed to be eternal proof to anybody who even vaguely didn't
like him that he was really a monarchist at heart--
that he's just waiting for a chance to convert the government
into a monarchy with a king at its head.
It's--You can see why it was important to keep the
proceedings secret and you can see how they did not get--remain
a secret for very long.
Right? Clearly they leaked.
If--this is like the tin can tied to Hamilton's reputation
for the rest of his life.
Clearly it's leaking, but--yeah, he never lived down
that speech.
Now the question is: why did he stand up and give
that speech?
Why did he stand up and praise the British government as being
the best government on the face of the earth?
Why did he propose this extreme plan knowing how people felt
about some of these ideas?
And there is disagreement; there is not agreement on this.
Some historians assume that this was a strategic move,
and that Hamilton was trying to push the Convention past the
weak New Jersey Plan or, horror or horrors,
just revising the Articles.
So according to this strategy, Hamilton's plan would have
looked so extreme that the Virginia Plan would look really
good in comparison, and sure enough not that long
after Hamilton's speech, the New Jersey Plan is
defeated, so if this is why Hamilton did this,
maybe you could say it worked.
However, it's equally possible that Hamilton wanted at least a
moment to stand up and offer his ideas and basically state,
'Okay.
Here's my plan of government.
Here's my little moment to shine.
Here's what I think we should be doing.'
And I always feel--I don't which of these is true or not
true.
I think either one could be or actually both could be,
but certainly the latter theory has a little credence to it only
because you have to feel sorry for Hamilton at the Convention.
Here is this guy who for roughly a decade has been saying
we need a stronger national government.
He's one of the first; he's one of the strongest;
he's consistent; he's out there;
this is his message.
He finally gets the Constitutional Convention and
the other two delegates from New York do not like the idea of
really strengthening the national government very much--
and it's one state, one vote, so basically his vote
doesn't matter at all.
So, this poor guy.
It's like: 'my mission, my mission;
hey, finally I'm here and...
I can't do anything.'
And it's like: aw, poor guy.
So it's possible that he did actually stand up and say,
'Okay, whatever.
Here's what I would do [laughs]--and I'm going to
announce this and never live it down--
but here's what I would do during this,
what should be my prime moment.'
So for one reason or another--who knows whether it
was strategic or because he wanted his moment to lay out his
plan-- the fact is that that night
after he gave the amazing speech he did meet with Madison and
revise Madison's notes so that they would be an accurate
reflection of what he said just in case anyone didn't hear him
praise the British government as the finest on the face of the
earth.
[laughter] Okay.
So a little truth in both, I think.
Now I'm about to do a really, really grave injustice to the
Constitution, and so now is the moment when
the Founders will be spinning in their graves,
because I'm going to basically condense my discussion of the
Constitution down to three main issues,
not because they're the only issues that should be discussed,
but because certainly they're all important issues,
and because they show something about how concerns--
issues--of the Revolution continued to play a role in
American politics and in American public life.
I apologize to all Founders for condensing the Constitution down
into mere minutes.
Okay.
The first issue that I want to discuss is representation.
And the question here, the obvious one:
population or one state, one vote.
Small state, big state battle.
Small states are afraid of having no influence,
which they continue to be afraid of.
This is not a battle that stops once this decision is made.
It continues on, and in one way or another
states are always sort of objecting.
There's a secession--potential secession plot by New England in
the early nineteenth century because they feel that they have
no influence.
So this doesn't go away, but certainly at this point
it's a real sticking point.
And ultimately a committee came up with a solution,
which is known either as the Great Compromise or the
Connecticut Compromise, and the reason why it's the
Connecticut Compromise is because it was proposed by
Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman.
Roger Sherman is a local boy.
Yet again New Haven appears on the map.
Roger Sherman lived in New Haven and actually--
You may have not have noticed it because I'm probably the geek
who notices every historical plaque in the universe,
but on the front of the Union League Caf� there actually is
a plaque to Roger Sherman.
It was his house.
Here was his house and here is what he did and we like Roger
Sherman.
So he's a New Haven guy.
He's the guy who proposes the Connecticut Compromise and
basically, as you could predict,
the compromise says representation in the lower
house will be based on population and in the upper
house one state, one vote.
And that gets passed on July 16,1787.
So representation, first major issue.
Second major issue--although in a way the problem with this one
is that it was not a major issue--
is the question of slavery, which clearly is linked to the
question of representation.
On August 8, Northern states attacked
slavery on moral grounds and proposed taking no account of
slaves as part of the population when allocating representation
in the national legislature.
Now obviously many Southerners did not like this idea and they
defended slavery on moral and economic grounds,
and they were joined by some Northerners who were afraid that
this issue was just going to dissolve the Union.
Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania offers a nice sort
of example of the anti-slavery point of view.
I'll quote Morris here: "Upon what principle is it
that the slaves shall be computed in the representation?
Are they men?
Then make them citizens and let them vote.
Are they property?
Why then is no other property included?
The houses in this city--Philadelphia--are worth
more than all the wretched slaves which cover the rice
swamps of South Carolina.
The admission of slaves into the representation,
when fairly explained, comes to this:
that the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina,
who goes to the coast of Africa, and in defiance of the
most sacred laws of humanity, tears his fellow creatures from
their dearest connections, and damns them to the most
cruel bondage, shall have more votes in a
government instituted for protection of the rights of
mankind than the citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey,
who views with a laudable horror so nefarious a
practice."
Wow.
That's a statement--a strong statement.
Other side of the argument: Charles Pinckney of South
Carolina was among those who stood up and tried to justify
slavery.
An example of his argument: He said, "If slavery be
wrong, it is justified by the example of all the world....
In all ages one half of mankind have been slaves."
And he cited Greece and Rome and other ancient city-states,
as well as sanctions given to slavery in modern times.
So slavery is mentioned, slavery has its moment of
debate, but it is important to note, it was in a sense a little
more than a moment.
It only occupied a few days.
The issue was recognized to be a deal breaker,
and when the delegates held up their concern over slavery
against the idea of forming a Union--
so basically when they saw that if they really confront the
issue of slavery, they may never get a chance to
confront the issue of union-- they just decided not to
confront the issue at all.
And they memorialized their inability to confront the issue
in the document, the Constitution itself,
in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution,
and Article I deals with Congress.
It states that, quote, "The Migration or
Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing
shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the
Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and
eight"-- which basically says Congress
can't stop the slave trade before 1808.
But look at how indirect that language is.
Right?
It doesn't say what I just said in very simple terms.
The "Importation of such Persons as any one of the States
shall think proper to admit."
Can there be a more indirect way of referring to slavery?
They're tap dancing around this issue.
They're finding one way or another just not to confront it,
so the word "slave"-- the word "slavery"--
does not appear in the Constitution.
So basically faced with a pretty fundamental moral
problem, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention looked
the other way.
In their minds, the Union was too tenuous for
anything this controversial to be addressed,
and this kind of sort of skipping out or not confronting
the issue because it seems like the deal-breaker would be seen
again and again and again, and obviously eventually it
becomes the deal-breaker and it does contribute to the breaking
of the Union.
Okay.
So representation, slavery, two large issues under
debate or not under debate depending on which one you're
talking about.
The third issue I want to bring up concerned the national
executive, and obviously that really had links to the
Revolution.
The Revolution was a revolt against strong centralized power
in the form of a monarchy and a monarch.
We've seen in previous lectures how state constitutions that
were created in the 1770s really showed this ongoing fear of
tyrannical centralized executive power.
So we've seen, when we were looking at those
state constitutions, how more often than not
legislatures were given more power and governors were denied
some power.
It's the same fear, the same spirit that's charging
the debate during the Convention.
So questions about the national executive came up again and
again.
How should he be elected?
By electors?
By electors chosen by state legislatures?
By state governors?
By the national legislature?
By popular election?
How long should he serve?
Proposals ranged from two years to life during good behavior.
The ultimate compromise suggested that the President
would serve for a four-year term and it didn't set a limit on how
often he could be reelected.
And he would be elected by electors in the separate states,
which reassured delegates who were worried about state
rights-- and each state could decide for
itself how to select its electors.
So if a state wanted to select electors by popular election,
they could.
If a state wanted to have their legislature pick electors,
they could.
Again, they're sort of allowing the states to come up with their
own way of doing this.
States still have rights.
But still, big, scary issue of the executive.
So in a way this--all of these sort of compromises and
decisions end up creating an executive who--
at least it felt like he was being controlled in some way
every four years by having to face election.
Now in some ways, considering everything that I
just said about being scared of monarchy,
kings, America sort of slipping right back into a monarchy,
this executive is granted a surprising amount of power.
He's Commander in Chief of the armed forces.
He could carry on diplomacy.
He could recommend measures to Congress.
He could exercise a veto, although obviously it could be
overturned by a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress.
Part of the reason for this amount of trust in the executive
was the idea of checks and balances.
So people really actually did believe in checks and balances
and think that this isn't a single executive,
sort of scary and alone with no way to check his power--
that the Constitution actually seems to be kind of nicely
balanced, so that maybe this person
actually has some restraints or some reins pulling him in.
Now obviously this is the--I'm--I feel so bad.
Hamilton, Madison--I'm so sorry.
This is the most vast overgeneralization of the
Constitution that I can almost possibly imagine,
and I will come back to it because we have to get it
ratified, which is part of what we're
going to do on Tuesday.
But in the interest of time: on September 16,1787,
the Constitution was agreed upon.
On September 17, it was signed and sent to the
Confederation Congress to pass along to the individual states
so that they could ratify it.
And there needed to be nine states to ratify the
Constitution for it to go into effect,
and each state would have its own ratifying convention to
decide the issue.
So what we're going to be looking at,
at least at the beginning of next Tuesday's lecture is this
second debate, which is: what do we really
think about the Constitution?
And part of what we'll be pulling from that is,
what kind of a sort of status check does it show us about what
Americans are thinking at the time?
In what way do the different arguments for and against tell
us something about America at that moment?
So we'll see the sort of highly contested debate.
We'll see states that say no and then say yes.
Rhode Island is still over here somewhere waiting to see what
happens.
And it's really something that people are watching closely.
I'll talk a little bit more about this on Tuesday,
but I once again also turn to Ezra Stiles.
I'm basically always looking for something that makes this
real, so that it's not just: the document,
the debate, the Constitution.
So Ezra Stiles' diary--I love Ezra Stiles' diary,
so I'll mention it a little bit more on Tuesday.
But he talks about what he thinks about what's going on,
and he talks about watching states ratify the Constitution.
I'll mention some of that as well, because it again,
shows one guy that's kind of responding to what's going on in
a really interesting way.
I will stop there.
I will see you on Tuesday.
Have a good weekend.