Question: Who said “that without impeachment the only way to remove a bad president would be assassination”?
A) Ben Franklin
B) George Washington
C) James Madison
D) James Monroe
(Answer: A: Ben Franklin during discussion of the presidency)
The Constitutional Convention was at an impasse in 1787 over representation, the presidency and the elephant in the room, slavery. A grand committee made up of one person from each state was formed to determine representation.
The small states, mostly located in New England, were afraid they would be outvoted every time by the larger, primarily southern, slave-holding states. Benjamin Franklin, always the diplomat, took a suggestion that Roger Sherman of Connecticut had proposed in an earlier debate, that each state should have equal representation in the upper house and proportional representation in the lower and added a concession to the large states that all money bills would originate in the lower house.
This won the unanimous support of the grand committee. As a concession to the slaveholding states another suggestion from Connecticut’s representatives, proposed that for representation slaves should be counted as 3/5 of a person.
James Madison of Virginia, James Wilson of Philadelphia and other members of the large states fought it on the convention floor. Madison at one point lost his temper. Later some of the large states withdrew their opposition. The Great Compromise as it was called passed by one vote and saved the convention from failure.
(Note: In this compromise the House would be elected by popular vote and the Senate by state legislatures. This changed in 1912 with the passing of the 17th Amendment allowing for the direct election of senators.
With their representation in the legislative bodies protected, the small states, to Washington’s “Delight,” became strong advocates for an “energetic” national government. They supported a resolution giving Congress the power to “legislate in all cases for the general interests of the Union.”
All seemed to be headed toward a resolution and an early end to the convention, but signs of trouble soon arose, and the convention once again seemed close to dissolving. Robert Yates and John Lansing Jr. quit and went home to New York, warning everyone that the larger states were creating a tyranny worse than George III’s.
Someone else spread a rumor that the convention had invited George III’s second son to be America’s king. Washington had to break the convention’s secrecy and issue a statement. “Though we cannot affirmatively tell you what we are doing—we [have] never once thought of a King.”
The delegates did, however, have to think about how to replace a king. All felt that the executive needed to be stronger and have more power than the state governors and the president who presided under the Articles of Confederation, none of whom had any substantial authority.
The questions about a president were conflicting: the Virginia Plan called for the president to be elected by Congress; George Mason of Virginia thought there should be three presidents; Massachusetts’ Elbridge Gerry thought the chief executive should be elected by state governors and serve for 15 years, and Alexander Hamilton of New York thought he should serve for life.
It was Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania who stepped into the fray with a proposal that was both clear and coherent. It was probably helpful that he was staying at the same residence as Washington, who very likely gave him his views on what he thought of the president’s role should be.
Morris didn’t mince words as he stood up to present his proposal. “ The president must not be the flunky of Congress. It must not be able to say to him ‘you owe your appointment to us.’ On the contrary the president’s role should be the people’s tribune, their guardian against legislative tyranny.”
He wanted the president to be elected directly by the people and for at least two reasonably long terms. Once he had given his opinion, he was open to compromise. At first he opposed Congress having the power of impeachment, but Franklin pointed out that without it, the only way to get rid of a bad president was assassination.
Morris quickly changed his mind. The delegates in the end gave the president an amazing amount of power, including as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. And there standing in front of them was Washington, who no one doubted would be the first president; his commanding presence reassuring everyone that he would not be a tyrant.
As the convention swung into the homestretch, the two parts of the Legislature were each given a name: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Collectively they would be called Congress, in homage to the existing Congress. Madison’s Supreme Tribunal became the Supreme Court.
There were some arguments such as when Charles Cotsworth Pickney felt that anyone wanting to be president should be worth at least $100,000. Franklin, in his droll manner, said he was opposed to anything “that tended to debase the common people.”
To this he added “the greatest rogues I ever knew were rich rogues.” Others wanted to restrict the vote to people who owned property. Again Franklin stood up for the for the common man, stating it was “of great consequence that we should not depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people.” The convention agreed.
The discussion turned to how to elect the president. The idea of having congress choose was quickly dispensed with. Next they considered state legislatures. After having been ill, John Dickerson of Delaware returned to the Convention. He objected to both proposals and stated, “I observed the powers which we had agreed to vest in the president were so many and so great that I did not think the people would be willing to deposit them with him unless they themselves would be more immediately concerned in his election.”
Gouverneur Morris then said, “Come Gentlemen, let us sit down again and converse further on this subject.”
With input from Madison, who had made a list of the suggestions and combined them into one, they came up with the compromise of the people electing electors to vote for president. Thus was born the electoral college.
Many of the delegates were still distrustful of the “Common Man” and for some the recent Shays Rebellion had changed their good opinion, with Washington among their numbers.
It was in these somewhat minor decisions that the cracks began to widen. Luther Martin threatened to go home after the printing of paper money by the states was banned. Edmund Randolf turned against the Constitution when the number of representatives in the house was limited to 1 per 40,000. The majority of the Virginia delegation sided with Randolf and rumors soon made their way to the capitol in Richmond.
Elbridge Gerry wanted to insert a clause limiting the military to 1,000 men. It is rumored that Washington famously broke his silence and remarked that he would agree with the proposition if Gerry could guarantee that no enemy would ever invade the United States with more than 1,000 men.
The wartime runaway inflation had led many American to lose confidence in the idea of paper money. During the postwar depress of 1784 to 1786, heated political battles occurred in every state over a variety of relief measures, most prominently the issuance of paper money. When relief wasn’t provided and farmers lost their farms to foreclosures, they resorted to violence in Exeter, N.H., Rutland and Windsor, Vt., Sharon, Conn., Charles County, Md., and Camden, S.C. In two Virginia counties courthouses were burned to destroy tax records.
In the midst of this turmoil, the delegates took on the elephant in the room, slavery.
Charles Cotesworth Pickney warned everyone that should the convention not add, “some security to the Southern States” regarding the issue of slavery, he would be “bound by my duty” to South Carolina to oppose the completed document. After much debate and threats of leaving the convention, it was decided the Atlantic slave trade would end in 1808. This was inserted into the Constitution, but everyone objected to the word slavery.
The delegates felt it should not be part of the document (many expected that slavery would soon die out) and three euphemisms were used in its place: he Constitution refers to slaves using three different formulations: “other persons,” “such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit,” and a “person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof.”
September brought some coolness following the hot Philadelphia summer as the document the delegates had worked on for four and a half months was completed and sent to the Committee of Style for arrangement of the Articles and to give them the words that were to create the new government.
On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was “laid out” to be signed, when Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts rose up and asked for a change in representation in the House from 1 in 40,000 people to 1 in 30,000. Washington put the proposal up for a vote, saying it was his wish “that the alteration proposed might take place.” It passed unanimously.
However, when it came to signing the document, controversy stirred. Of the delegates still there, Edmund Randolf, Elbridge Gerry and George Mason refused to sign.
Franklin was concerned that not having all the delegates sign would make it look as if the state delegations did not all agree. He worked around the issue by suggesting that by signing they merely acknowledged that all states were represented.
Now that it was complete, it was sent to the states for ratification.
Madison, in a letter to Jefferson in Paris, wrote of the Constitution, that given “the natural diversity of human opinions on all new and complicated subjects it is impossible to consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle.”
Franklin had similar thoughts when he gave his reasons for signing.
“When you assemble a number of men to have advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their local selfish interests and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does. Thus, I consent to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.”
Hamilton stated when he signed it, “No man’s ideas were more remote from the plan than [mine] were known to be. Never-the-less the choice was between Anarchy and convulsion on one side and the chance for good to be expected from the plan on the other.”
And then there is Franklin’s famous exchange with a Mrs. Porter as he left the convention hall.
Mrs. Porter, “Well, Dr. Franklin, what have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy?”
Franklin, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Next: Ratification- Federalists vs Anti-Federalists