CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. The Constitution, which has served since 1789 as the basic frame of government of the republic of the United States, was the work of a constitutional convention that sat at Philadelphia from late May 1787 until mid-September of that year. The convention had been called into being as the culminating event of a lengthy campaign for constitutional reform staged by a number of nationalistic political leaders, above all James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, both of whom had long been convinced that the ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION were hopelessly deficient as a frame of government. By 1786, the growing somnolence of the Confederation Congress, the manifest incompetence of the Confederation government in foreign affairs, and the obvious state of national bankruptcy, together with the sense of panic and dismay occasioned by SHAYS'S REBELLION in Massachusetts, had at long last spurred the states into concerted action.

The Virginia legislature issued an invitation to its sister states to meet in convention in Philadelphia in May 1787. As one after another of the other states responded, the Confederation Congress reluctantly joined in the call.

Twelve states in all sent delegates to the convention at Philadelphia. Rhode Island alone, then in the grip of a paper-money faction fearful of federal monetary reform, boycotted the meeting. In all, the twelve participating states appointed seventy-four delegates, of whom fifty-five actually put in an appearance. Of these, some fifteen or twenty men were responsible for virtually all of the convention's work; the contribution of the others was inconsequential.

Dominating the convention's proceedings from the beginning was a group of delegates intent upon the creation of a genuinely national government possessed of powers adequate to promote the security, financial stability, commercial prosperity, and general well-being of all of the states. Prominent among them were George Washington, whom the delegates chose as their presiding officer; James Madison, whose leadership in the convention would one day earn him the well-deserved title of "Father of the Constitution"; James Wilson, congressman and legal scholar from Pennsylvania; Gouverneur Morris, a brilliant and conservative aristocrat of New York background, also present as a Pennsylvania delegate; Rufus King, a highly respected veteran congressman from Massachusetts; and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Rutledge of South Carolina, representatives of that state's rice-planter aristocracy. In the nationalist camp also were the aged, garrulous, but vastly prestigious Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania; the pretentious but somewhat lightweight Edmund Randolph of Virginia; and Alexander Hamilton, whose extremist beliefs in centralized aristocratic government together with his inability to control the STATES' RIGHTS majority in the New York delegation cast a shadow on his convention role.

The nationalists also could command on most occasions the support of a group of moderate delegates who accepted the necessity for strong central government but were willing to compromise substantially with the convention's states' rights bloc when that proved necessary. Prominent among these men were Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Abraham Baldwin of Georgia.

A small, but significant, bloc of states' rights delegates was firmly opposed to the creation of a sovereign national government. Its leaders included William Paterson of New Jersey, the author of the New Jersey Plan; John Dickinson from Delaware; Gunning Bedford of Maryland; and John Lansing and Robert Yates of New York. These men recognized the necessity for constitutional reform but believed strongly that a confederation type of government ought to be retained and that by granting the Congress certain additional powers—above all the power to tax and to regulate commerce—the Articles of Confederation could be converted into an adequate frame of government.

Voting in the convention was by state, each state having one vote. On most occasions, the nationalist bloc controlled the votes of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the two Carolinas; on several critical decisions they proved able to muster the votes of Connecticut and Georgia as well. The states' rights party, by contrast, could count upon the votes of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, and occasionally Connecticut and Georgia. (New Hampshire was not yet represented in the convention.) Thus, the nationalist bloc in general controlled the convention. However, the states' rights delegates held one trump card—their implicit threat to break up the convention if they did not obtain certain concessions deemed by them to be fundamental to their cause.

The nationalist faction demonstrated its power at the very outset of the proceedings. Following organization for business, Edmund Randolph rose and in the name of his state presented what has since become known as the Virginia Plan—a proposal for a thoroughly nationalistic frame of government. Without debate the convention accepted the fifteen resolutions of the Virginia Plan as the basis for its further deliberations. The outstanding characteristic of this plan was its provision for a government that would exercise its authority directly upon individuals, in contrast to the Confederation government's dependence upon the states as agents to effect its will. The plan thus called for a genuinely national government rather than one based upon state sovereignty. The Virginia Plan's nationalism was also apparent in the broad sweep of legislative power it granted to Congress: to legislate in all cases in which the states were severally "incompetent." An ill-conceived provision would have empowered Congress to use force against any state derelict in its obligations to the Union, a procedure the nationalists soon recognized as unwise and unnecessary in a genuinely national government that would no longer use the states as agents to effect its will.

For the rest, the Virginia Plan provided for a two-house legislature, the lower house to be elected by the people of the several states and the upper to be elected by the lower out of nominations submitted by the state legislatures. A separately constituted executive officer was to be elected by Congress for an unspecified term and to be ineligible for reelection. There was also provision for a national judiciary, a portion of which, sitting with the executive, was to constitute a "council of revision," with an absolute veto over all legislation.

All this added up to a proposal to junk the Articles of Confederation outright, and to erect a powerful new national government, federal only in that it would still leave to the states a separate if unspecified area of sovereignty. Although several states' rights–oriented delegates objected that this would commit the convention to the establishment of an all-powerful central government, the Randolph-Morris resolution carried almost unanimously, Connecticut alone voting opposition.

The most serious conflict between the nationalist and states' rights factions came over the composition of the legislature. Here the nationalists, after intermittent debate lasting some seven weeks, were eventually forced to compromise, although without vital damage to the principle of nationalism. Madison, Wilson, Morris, and their fellow nationalists began the debate with the demand that both houses of Congress be apportioned according to representation and that the lower house, at least, be elected directly by the people of the several states. Only on the mode of election of the upper house did they show a disposition to compromise: here the convention early accepted unanimously a recommendation by Dickinson that senators be elected by state legislatures. But the states' rights faction, with some support from the moderates, early made it clear that they would accept nothing less than state equality in at least one house. In mid-June, to emphasize their point, they introduced the so-called New Jersey Plan, which called for a one-chamber legislature based upon state equality—that is, a continuation of the Confederation Congress. The New Jersey Plan met prompt defeat, but the impasse remained.

The ultimate solution was found in the so-called Great Compromise, reported early in July by a special Committee of Eleven, one delegate from each state. This provided that the lower house of Congress be apportioned according to population, that each state have one vote in the upper house, but that all bills for raising revenue originate in the lower house. A further resolution, offered by Elbridge Gerry, provided that senators were to vote as individuals and not as state delegations. After two weeks of further debate, the nationalists yielded and accepted the compromise.

The debate on the executive proved to be protracted and difficult, but it too yielded what amounted ultimately to a victory for a strong national government. The nationalists were determined to have a powerful, independently constituted executive, and to this end they soon decided that the provision in the Virginia Plan for election of the president by Congress was altogether unsatisfactory. But for a long time no adequate alternative appeared. Direct popular election, early proposed by Wilson, was rejected as too democratic; choice of the president by state legislatures conceded too much to states' rights.

At length, after protracted debate marked by vacillation and uncertainty rather than bitter dispute, the delegates accepted another idea originally advanced by Wilson: choice of the president by electors chosen by the several states. In early September, a second Committee of Eleven brought in a plan to allot to each state a number of electors equal to its whole number of senators and representatives. Each state was to be allowed to choose its representatives as it wished—thus reserving a role for the states but opening the door for eventual choice of electors by popular vote. The electors, assembled in their separate states, were to vote by ballot for two candidates for president. The candidate receiving the highest total vote among all the states, if this were a majority of the electors, was to be declared elected president, while that candidate receiving the second highest number of votes, if that were also a majority of the electors, was to be declared elected vice president. If no candidate received a majority, the Senate was to elect the president from the five leading candidates. The convention altered the committee proposal only to provide for election of the president by the House of Representatives, voting by states, instead of by the Senate, should no candidate receive an electoral majority. The Senate, in the amended plan, was to elect the vice president.

In practice, the convention's solution to the problem of electing the president was to prove a victory for the proponents of a strong president, for nationalism, and—in the long run—for democracy. The rise of political parties resulted in a situation in which the ELECTORAL COLLEGE, rather than the Congress, commonly chose the president—only one election, that of 1824, being settled in the House of Representatives for want of an electoral college majority for any candidate. The requirement for an electoral college majority also was to prove a powerful factor in encouraging intersectional political parties and the reconciliation of sectional differences, again an important element in the development of American nationalism. Finally, the fact that the finished Constitution allowed the states to choose their electors in any manner they wished opened the way, after 1789, for the selection of electors by direct popular election—a mode of election every state in the Union except South Carolina was to adopt by 1832. Adaptability of the Constitution to the growth of political democracy was to be a major factor in the new charter's remarkable durability.

Equally nationalistic in its long-range implications was the convention's resort to the judiciary to solve the difficult problem of guaranteeing federal sovereignty and national supremacy against incursion by the states. The convention early rejected coercion of derelict states as inconsistent with the prospective government's sovereign character. State coercion, the nationalists had come to realize, implied state sovereignty. A little later the delegates abandoned congressional disallowance of state legislation as also involving a wrong principle; exercise of a veto over unconstitutional legislation, they had concluded, was properly a judicial, rather than a legislative, function.

Quite surprisingly, the states' rights–oriented New Jersey Plan supplied the final solution. This plan carried a clause declaring the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the national government to be the "supreme law of the respective states" and binding the state courts to enforce them as such, anything in their own constitutions and laws to the contrary not withstanding. Following rejection of the congressional veto, the convention adopted the supremacy clause from the New Jersey Plan, at the same time altering its language to make the federal Constitution, treaties, and acts of Congress "the supreme law of the land."

Incorporation of the supremacy clause in the new Constitution was a tremendous victory in disguise for the nationalist cause. On the surface the clause made an agency of the states—the state courts—the final judge of the limits of both federal and state sovereignty, which explains why the states' rights faction acceded so readily to its adoption. But the convention, meanwhile, had also provided for the establishment of a national judiciary, with a SUPREME COURT and such lower courts as Congress should determine upon, and had vested in the federal courts jurisdiction over all cases arising under the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the United States. By implication, as the nationalists were shortly to realize, this gave the federal judiciary appellate power to review state court decisions involving federal constitutional questions. This in turn meant that the Supreme Court of the United States would possess the ultimate power to settle questions involving the respective spheres of state and federal sovereignty. The JUDICIARY ACT OF 1789, virtually an extension of the Constitution itself, was to write into federal law this system of appeals from state to federal courts on constitutional questions. And the Supreme Court in MARTIN V. HUNTER'S LESSEE (1816) and COHENS V. VIRGINIA (1821) was to confirm the constitutionality of the Supreme Court's role as the final arbiter of the constitutional system.

Meanwhile, in a concession to the states' rights party, the convention had quietly dropped the sweeping delegation to Congress of power to legislate in all cases in which the states were severally "incompetent" and had resorted instead to a specific enumeration of the powers of Congress, as the Articles of Confederation provided. The new Constitution's enumeration, however, was far more impressive than that in the articles. In addition to the familiar authority to legislate upon matters of war, foreign affairs, the post office, currency, Indian affairs, and the like, Congress was also to possess the all-important powers of taxation and regulation of foreign and interstate commerce, as well as authority to enact naturalization, bankruptcy, and patent and copyright laws. Further, the convention in its final draft incorporated an important clause giving Congress the power to enact "necessary and proper" legislation in fulfillment of its delegated powers, and it accepted a vaguely drafted "general welfare clause" that, with the "necessary and proper" provisions, was to serve in the twentieth century as the basis for a tremendous expansion of federal power.

In mid-September 1787 the convention put its various resolutions and decisions into a finished draft and submitted the Constitution to the states for approval. The convention had provided for ratification of the Constitution by conventions in the several states, stipulating that ratification by any nine states would be sufficient to put the Constitution into effect. This mode of ratification gravely violated the provision in the Articles of Confederation for ratification of constitutional amendments by unanimous action of the several state legislatures; but it also gave the Constitution a reasonable chance for adoption, which it otherwise would not have had.

In fact, the Federalists, as the proponents of ratification of the Constitution soon became known, in the next ten months carried every state but two, failing only in Rhode Island and North Carolina. There were several reasons behind their impressive victory. Most important, the Federalists had a positive and imaginative remedy to offer for the country's grave constitutional ills. Their opponents, the Antifederalists, although they opposed the Constitution as a dangerous instrument of potential tyranny, could offer no constructive proposal of their own.

Very influential was the fact that most of the young republic's illustrious public figures—Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Rutledge, King, Pinckney, and Wilson among them—favored ratification. It was a galaxy that quite outshone Antifederalists Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, and the vacillating Sam Adams. Such was his immense prestige that Washington's voice alone may well have been decisive in the ratification debate.

The distribution of delegates in the state ratifying conventions also helped the Federalist cause. Delegates to these bodies were in every instance elected from the existing districts of the various state legislatures, most of which had for many years been gerrymandered in favor of the tidewater regions. But it was precisely in these districts that the people generally were most keenly aware of the deficiencies of the Confederation government and that support for ratification was strongest.

The Federalists also won impressive early victories in several less populous states, where public sentiment was heavily influenced by the Constitution's provision for state equality in the Senate. Delaware and New Jersey, which ratified in December; Georgia and Connecticut, which ratified in January; and Maryland, which ratified in April, fell into this category. This initial ratification surge proved to be very favorable psychologically to the Federalist cause.

The Federalists' political strategy also was far superior to that of their opponents. In Pennsylvania, where public sentiment strongly favored ratification, the Federalists first defeated an attempt in the legislature to block the quorum necessary for a convention call. Under Wilson's masterful leadership, the Federalists in December then drove the Constitution through to ratification in the state convention. In South Carolina, the Federalists effectively thwarted an Antifederalist attempt to defeat a convention call. They controlled the subsequent convention without difficulty.

Federalist strategy was most impressive in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York. In each instance, initial prospects for ratification had been dubious. In Massachusetts, where Antifederalist feeling was exacerbated by bitter memories of Shays's Rebellion, the Federalists first won over John Hancock and Sam Adams with hints of high national office. They then converted a number of marginal Antifederalists by freely accepting a variety of proposals for a federal bill of rights. Ratification followed in February by the narrow vote of 187 to 168. The Virginia convention, which assembled in June, witnessed a spectacular debate between Patrick Henry and Madison, in which the quiet and scholarly Madison used carefully reasoned analysis of the Constitution to refute Henry's impassioned assault. Again, ready Federalist acceptance of proposals for a bill of rights helped carry the day. The Federalists triumphed on the ratification vote (89 to 79). In New York, over two-thirds of the delegates to the June convention were declared Antifederalists, and the state's powerful landed aristocracy also opposed ratification, mainly because of the Constitution's potential impact on New York's revenue system. But the Constitution's supporters earlier had softened public opinion somewhat with a series of newspaper articles by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, published eventually under the title of The Federalist, which still stands as one of the most brilliant analyses of the Constitution ever written. News that both New Hampshire and Virginia, the ninth and tenth states to ratify, had lately acted favorably and that the Constitution would in any event go into operation badly damaged Antifederalist morale. Again, conciliatory Federalist acceptance of proposed amendments, together with their support for a meaningless resolution calling for a second federal convention, proved decisive. On the final vote the Constitution was ratified (30 to 27).

The Rhode Island legislature, still controlled by hostile paper-money advocates, had refused even to call a convention. In the essentially frontier state of North Carolina, where public sentiment heavily opposed ratification, the state convention, meeting in July, was dominated by Anti-federalists. This body finally adjourned without any formal vote on ratification. At length, in November 1789, a second North Carolina convention, convening several months after the new government had gone into operation, ratified the Constitution without incident. In Rhode Island, a Federalist faction captured control of the state legislature in the spring of 1790. The new assembly promptly called a convention, which ratified the Constitution in May (34 to 32).

Both the drafting and ratification of the Constitution were triumphs for the framers' Enlightenment philosophy: faith in the essentially rational character of man and society, and belief in man's ability to define and solve social and political problems adequately. Indeed the Constitution itself is perhaps best understood as an Enlightenment document, embodying as it does in its preamble the objectives of justice, order, liberty, and the general welfare, and with its explicit and implicit commitments to the ideals of limited government, civil liberties, separation of church and state, the confinement of military power, and an open society.

The Constitution has sometimes been interpreted either as an antidemocratic document—as contrasted with the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE with its profession of faith in universal human equality—or as no more than an instrument of selfish class interests. Both views are superficial and essentially erroneous. The Constitution was adopted by a process far more democratic than was the Declaration of Independence, which was promulgated without any popular validation or consent whatever. At the time of its adoption, the Constitution also was by far the most popular and democratically oriented frame of national government in the world. It provided for a republican government when all others, with a few minor exceptions, were monarchical. Furthermore, in its provisions for a popularly based legislative house and for a president and Senate indirectly subject to democratic processes, in its sharp limitation upon the power of government to punish for treason, and in its general concern for limited government and civil liberties, it went a great deal further in the direction of modern democracy than any other national government then in existence. Moreover, the Constitution's open-ended character, which later made it possible to adapt its provisions to the steady growth of political democracy, was no accident. It expressed instead the self-conscious belief of the framers in the idea of flexibility and growth in government, rather than stifling rigidity.

Nor was the Constitution, viewed in the large, a product of selfish and exclusive class interests. In 1913 the historian Charles A. Beard published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, in which he asserted that the Constitution was the work of an economic elite whose wealth was concentrated in paper: land speculators, bondholders, moneyed merchants and lawyers, and the like. The Constitution, Beard asserted, reflected the interests of this class. In support of his argument, he pointed to the Constitution's provisions banning states from issuing paper money or impairing the obligations of contracts, guaranteeing the national government control over money and credit, and guaranteeing the national debt. But careful research in the 1950s and 1960s has shown that the framers as a group were not especially involved in bondholding and speculative operations and that they were drawn as much from planter, agrarian, and nonspeculative mercantile and legal interests as from any moneyed elite. The Constitution did indeed reflect the special concern of men of property, learning, position, and community standing for stable, well-ordered government. This was hardly narrow selfishness; rather it constituted enlightened patriotism.

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

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