CHAPTER I. THE CONSTITUTION IN OUTLINE. 14 MAY TO 13 JUNE, 1787. I. Do nations float darkling down the stream of the CHAP. ages without hope or consolation, swaying with every wind and ignorant whither they are drifting? or, is 1787. there a superior power of intelligence and love, which is moved by justice and shapes their course? From the ocean to the American outposts nearest the Mississippi one desire prevailed for a closer connection, one belief that the only opportunity for its crea tion was come. Men, who, from their greater attachment to the states, feared its hazards, neither coveted nor accepted an election to the convention, and in uneasy watchfulness awaited the course of events. Willie Jones of North Carolina, declining to serve, was replaced by Hugh Williamson, who had voted with Jefferson for excluding slavery from the territories. Patrick Henry, Thomas Nelson, and Richard Henry Lee refusing to be delegates, Edmund Randolph, then governor of Virginia and himself a delegate to the convention, named to one vacancy James May. May. CHAP. McClurg, a professor in the college of William and I. Mary, whom Madison had urged upon congress for the 1787. office of secretary of foreign affairs. No state except New York sent a delegation insensible to the necessity of a vigorous union. Discordant passions were repressed by the solemnity of the moment; and, as the statesmen who were to create a new constitution, veterans in the war and in the halls of legislation, journeyed for the most part on horseback to their place of meeting, the high-wrought hopes of the na tion went along with them. Nor did they deserve the interest of the people of the United States alone; they felt the ennobling love for their fellow-men, and knew themselves to be forerunners of reform for the civilized world. 14. George Washington was met at Chester by public honors. From the Schuylkill the city light horse escorted him into Philadelphia, the bells chiming all the while. His first act was to wait upon Franklin, the president of Pennsylvania. On the fourteenth of May, at the hour appointed for opening the federal convention, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the only states which were sufficiently represented, repaired to the state-house, and, with others as they gathered in, continued to do so, adjourning from day to day. Of deputies, the credentials of Connecticut and Maryland required but one to represent the state; of New York, South Carolina, and Georgia, two; of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and North Carolina, three; of Pennsylvania, four. The delay was turned to the best account by James Madison of Virginia. From I. May 14. the completion of the Virginia delegation by the ar- CHAP. rival of George Mason, who came with unselfish zeal to do his part in fulfilling "the expectations and 1787. hopes of all the union," they not only attended the general session, but "conferred together by themselves two or three hours every day in order to form a proper correspondence of sentiments." As their state had initiated the convention, they held it their duty at its opening to propose a finished plan for consideration. 1 The choice lay between an amended confederacy and "the new constitution" for which Washington four years before had pleaded with the people of every state. "My wish is," so he had written to Mad- 14-24. ison, "that the convention may adopt no temporizing expedients, but probe the defects of the constitution to the bottom and provide a radical cure, whether agreed to or not. A conduct of this kind will stamp wisdom and dignity on their proceedings, and hold up a light which sooner or later will have its influ We know from Randolph himself that before departing for the convention he was disposed to do no more than amend the confederation; and his decision was likely to have great weight in the councils of his own commonwealth. When his royalist father, attorney-general of Virginia, took refuge with the Eng lish, the son cleaved to his native land. At his own request and the solicitation of Richard Henry Lee, Washington received him as an aid during the siege 'George Mason to his son, Philadelphia, May 20. MS. 2 Washington to Lafayette, 5 CHAP. of Boston. In 1776 he took a part in the convention I. for forming the constitution of Virginia; and the con1787. vention rewarded his patriotism by electing him at 14-24. twenty-three years of age attorney-general of Virginia May in the place of his father. In 1779 he preceded Madison by a year as a delegate to congress. In the effort for the reform of the confederation, he, with Ellsworth of Connecticut and Varnum of Rhode Island for his associates, was the chairman of the committee appointed to report on the defects of the confederacy and the new powers necessary for its efficiency. In 1786 he was elected governor of Virginia; and now in his thirty-fourth year he was sent to the convention, bringing with him a reputation for ability equal to his high position, and in the race for public honors taking the lead of Monroe. But with all his merit there was a strain of weakness in his character, so that he was like a soft metal which needs to be held in place by coils of a harder grain than its own. That support he found in Madison, who had urged him to act a foremost part in the convention, and had laid before him the principles on which the new government should be organized; and in Washington, who was unceasing in his monitions and encouragement. Randolph, on his arrival in Philadelphia, at once yielded to their influence, and with them became persuaded that the confederacy was destitute of every energy which a constitution of the United States ought to possess.' The result was harmony among the Virginia delegates. A plan for a national government, which em1 Randolph to Speaker, 10 Oct., 1787. I. May bodied the thoughts of Madison, altered and amended CHAP. by their joint consultations, was agreed to by them all. To Randolph, as the official representative of the 1787. state, was unanimously assigned the office of bringing 14-24. forward the outline which was to be known as the plan of Virginia. This forethought provided in season a chart for the voyage, so that the ship, skilfully ballasted and trimmed from the beginning, could be steered through perilous channels to the wished-for haven. A government founded directly on the people seemed to justify and require a distribution of suf frage in the national legislature according to some equitable ratio. Gouverneur Morris and other members from Pennsylvania in conversation urged the large states to unite from the first in refusing to the smaller states in the federal convention the equal vote which they enjoyed in the congress of the confederacy; but the Virginians, while as the largest state in extent and in numbers they claimed a proportioned legislative suffrage as an essential right which must be asserted and allowed, stifled the project, being of the opinion that the small states would be more willing to renounce this unequal privilege in return for an efficient government, than to disarm themselves before the battle without an equivalent.' On the seventeenth, South Carolina appeared on the floor; on the eighteenth, New York; on the twentyfirst, Delaware; on the twenty-second, North Carolina. Of the delegates, some were for half-way meas 'Madison Papers, edited by Gilpin, 726. Stereotyped reprint of Elliot, 125. |