Transcription
Hello and welcome to lecture number eight, the Constitutional Convention, 1787. What I want to start off doing is talk about two significant points concerning the Constitution and the process of constitution making.
The first point is this: if I had to choose one word to sum up or describe the process of constitution making in Philadelphia in 1787, that word would be compromise. The United States Constitution is a set of compromises, right? This has to be a document that governs a large area with diverse peoples, differing political ideologies. So, out of necessity, our Constitution is born from a set of compromises at the Philadelphia Convention. And as we go forward in this lecture, I'll talk about each of the significant compromises. Okay, that's the first point: compromise.
The second point I want to make concerns the idea of original intent. The idea that in order to adjudicate cases today, courts and legislators, when enacting laws, must try to discern the Founders' original intent when coming up with the Constitution. And I propose this to you: that discerning original intent is almost impossible. Now, you could go back and look at an individual's original intent when proposing the Constitution or some sort of changes to the Constitution or proposing articles in the Constitution, etc. You could find out what James Madison was thinking when he proposed the Virginia Plan and what his intentions were, or Alexander Hamilton's intentions when he proposed a strong national government. Now, that being said, as I said in my first point, the Constitution is a set of compromises. So how can you possibly discern what the original intent was of everybody involved in these compromises? And if you're in comp—if you're compromising your original intent, how can you, one, uh, let's say, modern day, say that this person's original intent or intentions was any more valid than the person that they compromised with? And you're talking about 55 individuals compromising here. Now, on top of that, right, what really matters because of the process of ratification, right? The Constitution's ratified technically by the people. So what really matters is the people's perceptions of what they were ratifying when they voted on the Constitution, right? What did the people think the Constitution meant? And the individual articles of the Constitution meant, the individual provisions of the Constitution meant. So it is virtually impossible to discern any sort of original intent out of any provision of the Constitution because of all the people involved and all the compromises and all the diverse opinions. So those are the two things to begin with that I submit to you. Think of the Constitution as this grand compromise between factional interests, whether it be large state versus small state, North versus South, slave versus free, agrarian versus urban. Okay? It's a set of compromises. And that original intent in mass, right, large, is almost impossible to discern.
So let's go to the convention. And the first thing we're going to talk about is the composition of this convention. The convention was originally scheduled for the second Monday in May, 1787, but it was not convened until May 25th because there was not a quorum present. And actually, it wasn't even until the end of June before there's a full component of 11 states making up the quorum. There were never more than 11 states represented at the convention at any one time. Rhode Island, the state, the one state under the Articles of Confederation government that chose not to ratify an impost amendment, thus defeating the amendment. Rhode Island is the only state that chose not to send a delegation to the Constitutional Convention. They're adamantly opposed to any changes in the Articles of Confederation, right? And that's why the Constitution is called the Constitutional Convention is called to propose changes to the Articles of Confederation, not to form a new government, not to form a new governing document, just to change the Articles of Confederation to make it stronger, to make it work better, because clearly, as I mentioned last lecture, to the young nationalists and those property-conscious conservatives, the Articles' government was not working. So Rhode Island chooses to send nobody at all because they're opposed to any changes. They never participated. New Hampshire was slow to respond and select delegates. Delegates from New Hampshire arrived late in July, two months after the process was underway. Before New Hampshire arrived, two of the three New York delegates left, which avoided New York's vote. Alexander Hamilton was the only New York delegate that stayed. So there's no more than 11 states at any one time at the convention. So people are coming and going.
The convention was made up of a total of 55 white males. 74 had been named by state legislatures to attend, but 19 did not. So you have 55 white males determining the future government of the country. Most of the work, however, was done by a dozen key individuals. George Washington was the presiding officer. He didn't take any real part in the debates. However, he may have influenced events behind the scenes. By far the most influential person at the convention was James Madison. Thus, Madison is known as the Father of the Constitution. Madison was young, he was 36 at the time. He was a fine scholar and public servant. He had done his homework, researching various past governments around the world to try to come up with the best form of government for the United States moving forward. He provides the Virginia Plan around which everything at the convention evolved. Madison is the person who kept notes on the convention. He wrote down everything that happened in the evenings after the proceedings. His notes are the one primary source from inside the convention, the main primary source, historian's only real and effective source for what went on. Madison, as I mentioned last lecture, was a key leader of the nationalists, right, that favored a strong national government. And after Madison, there's kind of a drop-off in importance. James Wilson was there. He's a recently arrived Scotsman who settled in Pennsylvania, had been trained in Scottish universities. And James Wilson was the best legal theorist in the United States at the time. Historians kind of consider him second to Madison in influence. And he, as well, was a strong nationalist and was probably the voice of Ben Franklin at the convention, who was a close ally. And by the time of the convention, Ben Franklin was there. He was just getting very, very old. And Wilson spoke for him.
Others were also influential. You have Governor Morris of Pennsylvania, who was the finest writer of the group, and he's the one who put the Constitution in its final literary form, or seems to have done that. As I mentioned before, Alexander Hamilton was there. He was only a modest influence at the time. He's only 30 years old at the time, and his prominence would come in the future. Hamilton, in fact, advocated a monarchy, a kind of American-style monarchy. He wants to abolish the states because he felt they threatened national unity. So his views were kind of extreme at the convention. But it is interesting that those views were at the convention, this idea of, um, advocating this monarchy, this powerful national government, when you had just fought a war against a tyrannical monarch. So his views are kind of extreme, but they're there.
If you're going to assess the common characteristics of the group, these members of the Constitutional Convention, they're all relatively young. The average age was 42. I know many of you may be thinking that, well, that's not young, that's old. But, uh, in terms of prominence in Constitution making and, uh, government and political processes, that's relatively young. The youngest was 26. The oldest was Ben Franklin, he was 81 at the time. Most of these Constitution makers were lawyers with long experience in public office. Most were wealthy. Franklin and Sherman were the only real self-made men of the group. There's a lot of planters from the South and merchants from the Northeast. These people at the convention are basically the cream of the Revolutionary generation. A third of them had served in the Continental Army as officers, exclusively. 70% of them, 39 of the 55 delegates, had served in the Continental Congress or the Articles of Confederation Congress. So there's Congressional experience there. The delegates were heavily Protestant. 53 were Protestant, two were Catholic.
It is significant to note that of the Revolutionary generation, these prominent revolutionaries, there were four conspicuous absences. John Adams, who is a student of constitutions, just like James Madison, wasn't there. Adams understood how constitutions worked, but at the time, he was representing the United States at the Court of St. James in England. He's a diplomat. Thomas Jefferson, right, the author of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most prominent Founders we think of, one of the most influential ideologues of the time, wasn't there. He was holding a similar diplomatic post in Paris, and he probably would have made important contributions. Patrick Henry chose not to go. The Virginia legislature had elected him, and in a famous line, he said, "I smell a rat." He sensed that there was something bigger going on than a change to the Articles of Confederation. Sam Adams, that zealous revolutionary and Sons of Liberty, didn't attend. He didn't want to see any change at all in the Articles' government. So that is your composition. Many common traits: young, lawyers, wealthy, Congressional experience, Protestant.
So we got the composition out of the way. Now let's talk about the procedures. These delegates did their work in secrecy. It was an agreement from day one. No communications beyond the 55 delegates concerning the proceedings were supposed to occur, and they did this because they wanted full freedom to discuss without fear or any sort of later ridicule or contempt for their ideas. They took secrecy very seriously. Now, they, they meet in the summer in Philadelphia, 1787. It's extremely hot, extremely humid. They kept the windows boarded up, sealed off the outside world. Now, we can see just how important secrecy was. George Washington kept a daily diary while he was in Philadelphia, and his diary says nothing about the convention. Now, some write letters home which reveal some things. We know most of the work at the convention was done in committees. All the voting was done by state. Each state had one vote, so there's state equality. It was simple majority rule on all questions. They used a what's called a Committee of the Whole a lot, and it, this Committee of the Whole was utilized to encourage open, free debate, to avoid motions and amendments, and this speeds the process and simplifies it. The members agreed from the beginning that there should be no note-passing or whispering or asides while someone was talking, trying to be very respectful and move the process along. The average weekly attendance, remember I said that, uh, people were coming and going, the average attendance each meeting was around 40, right? There's a total of 55 delegates that attended, and the average attendance was around 40. The group met five to six days a week, five to six hours a day. They adjourned at 4. James Madison was the only member that did not miss a session. And they would debate an issue as long as it felt comfortable to do so. However, passions became heated and they couldn't arrive at decisions. They turn it over to what was called a committee, or excuse me, they turn it over to a committee to compromise. One of the committees they had was the Committee on Postponed Matters. This committee did the most on the section of the president. The delegates, in fact, decided a lot, made a lot of decisions in what became known as tavern caucuses. Right after the proceedings broke up every day at 4, the delegates would move to taverns. They dined in taverns. They would gather state delegations and work out problems over dinner and drinks.
Now, as I said in the opening of the lecture, there were divisions. Therefore, they had to be compromises. And these divisions were easy to discern. And there's a handful at most: big states versus small states, North versus South, those who favored slavery, those who opposed slavery. But there's, there's three, I guess, major ideas at work here. The two biggest proponents of the first were John Jay and Alexander Hamilton of New York, and they were strong, strong nationalists. As I mentioned, Hamilton wanted to return to some sort of American form of monarchy. But they were convinced that the, that only a unitary system could provide a new nation, only a unitary system could provide unity. And this would be a system that gave the national government most of the power. They felt that the continued maintenance of the states would bring disunion. So they want all the power at the national level, no power at the state level. And this is a very extreme group.
Now, a much larger group, making up nearly half of the delegates, rally around James Madison's Virginia Plan. And it's kind of the middle ground in these three competing, uh, ideas or philosophies about what the national government should be. And this Virginia Plan, which I, I'll talk about in, in greater detail here shortly, uh, it retains states and their control over local affairs, but it creates a sovereign national government with the power to tax, the power to regulate, uh, and the power to force states to comply with the national government. So it's kind of a shift from state sovereignty to national sovereignty. States would have their own independence in terms of local law, but the national government would have no dependence upon the states, right? As it stood under the Articles of Confederation, the national government really had no power. Remember that it had to ask the states for revenue and could not impose taxes or, uh, revenue measures upon the states. So the Virginia Plan is looking to correct this and shift sovereignty away from the state governments and toward the, the, uh, national government.
And in a federated system, the third segment, this third group of ideas, weren't as large nor as committed as those, uh, advocates of the Virginia Plan. These people were committed to the preservation of state sovereignty. They want to strengthen the national government because they know that the Articles of Confederation aren't working, but they fear that the large states will overwhelm the small states. Representatives of New Jersey and Delaware are in favor of retention of state sovereignty. Right? They're both from small states. New Jersey is a small state, Delaware is a small state. They want to retain the state sovereignty so they continue to have some sort of power in this federal system. So, as I mentioned before, the convention was called to only amend the Articles of Confederation in order to strengthen the national government, not to form a new Constitution. And these people who wanted to amend the Articles the entire time, this was the segment behind, uh, what would become the opposition plan to the Virginia Plan, known as the New Jersey Plan.
So let's talk a little more in detail about each one of these plans. And we'll start with the Virginia Plan because, as I mentioned before, this is the plan around which the convention evolves and the Constitution evolves. It's James Madison's plan for a new constitutional system. He proposes it. That's why he's known as the Father of the Constitution. He's also the one who organizes and drafts the Bill of Rights down the road. So he drafts this plan, this Virginia Plan. He brings it to Philadelphia. He had it pre-prepared. The Virginia delegation had caucused previously. They had talked over the plan, they made some changes to it, but it was a proposal for a new government from the beginning. So Madison, going in, knew he wanted a new government. He wanted to scrap the Articles of Confederation. The Virginia Plan was proposed to the convention on the second day. And as I said, it proposed an entirely new constitution. It proposed an extraordinarily powerful national government. In fact, it proposed a, a stronger national government than the one which was ultimately created. It was a government without real limits on its authority. The Constitution we have now is a document of enumerated powers, right? Powers are granted by the people and given to the national government. We operate on the theory that if the Constitution doesn't give a branch of government the power to do something, then that branch can't do it, right? Enumerated powers. The Virginia Plan had no defined powers, meaning there were no defined limits on the federal government. It would give the federal government all the powers granted to the Articles of Confederation Congress, and then three specific additional powers. The first power was the power to act where the states were incompetent. So the national government would be able to, would be the one who judged when and where the states were incompetent. This is a huge power that this plan proposed. The second additional power was the power to veto state laws. He essentially, these two taken together, basically mean that Congress has the, the authority to define its own power at the national level, right? If you can say a state's incompetent and now you have the power to act, or you can veto state laws, then ultimately you have all the power. A third specific additional power was proposed, and this power would have given the national government the specific authority to coerce states. And here's your element of coercion: if states would not deliver the money required by Congress to raise revenue, Congress could collect the money by whatever means necessary, militarily or bureaucratically.
The Virginia Plan became known as the large state plan because it was mainly the larger states that backed it. It included three branches of government, right, similar to what we have today. It proposed a bicameral legislature, a two-house legislature, and the lower house was to be elected by the people for three, excuse me, for three-year terms, and the composition was to be based on population, a kind of proportional representation. Obviously, that favored the larger states, the states with the larger amount of population, because they're going to get more representatives in this lower house, and that's how it works today. The upper house, the Senate, was to be elected by the lower house. And this idea was quickly dropped. Madison then pushed for the election of the Senators by the people, okay? So he proposes, first, the legislature elect the Senate, and then he proposes that the people at large elect the Senate. Now, if you think about that, both of those would place all the power in the hands of the larger states because they have more population. Madison was absolutely certain that he wanted no state representation in the system whatsoever. In other words, he didn't want to grant equality to each state, and he didn't want states making decisions. He wanted all proportional representation, and as I said, that benefits those states that have a larger population.
In terms of an executive, Madison proposed a totally independent chief executive. First, he wanted that executive to be elected by the legislature, but then Madison proposed a president elected by the people to serve a seven-year term. His proposal included no vice president, and he felt there should be some sort of executive council of six to advise the president. And these six members would come from different regions of the United States in order to, uh, implement or impose some type of equality of interest between the sections. He proposed that two should come from New England, two should come from the South, and two should come from in between. And this executive council would advise the president and have veto power over the legislature. So there's some power there. The plan sought an independent judiciary, which would be appointed by the president. Another unique element to Madison's plan was what's called the Council of Revision, which would be composed of federal judges and the president. And this council could alter the Constitution from time to time. So this is Madison's plan, which becomes the large state plan because they're in favor of this proportional representation because they have the larger populations, thus they would have more influence and power in national government. And this Virginia Plan was a focus of debate, uh, from late May to about the middle of June. And the, the main debate centered on the composition of the legislature, right? This proportional representation, or how each house, the lower and the upper, of Congress would be composed. They don't debate much, they don't talk much about specific powers. They're basically concerned about who gets represented where, who's going to have the influence. And most of this debate, as I already said, pitted large states against small states, and it's over the method of electing both houses and apportioning representation. The nationalists want a direct popular election of at least one of the two houses, minimum, and they wanted both of the houses apportioned based on population. However, small states wanted some sort of recognition of state sovereignty. They want the state legislators to play a role in electing representatives, and they want the principle of state equality in both houses. That means, in this principle of state equality, that one state, no matter how large or small the population, is going to have the same influence and same voting power as the next state, independent of population, right? This idea of state equality, as I talk about here when I talk about, uh, the Great Compromise, it's upheld in the Senate, right? So think about today's Senate, each state gets two senators, so there's equal voting power among states. That's what state equality is.
Now, both sides are willing to compromise on the mode of election. And this compromise came June 7th during the discussion of the Virginia Plan, when a, a Delaware representative proposed that the Senate be elected by state legislators and the House be elected by direct popular vote. And this compromise was adopted unanimously. It was an easy compromise to make, and our government operated this way until the 17th Amendment in 1913. And the 17th Amendment changed the way senators were elected. It used to be, as the Constitution outlined, that state legislators will elect the senators. Well, with the 17th Amendment in 1913, senators were then elected by popular vote, as they are today. So this is an easy compromise: equality in the Senate, proportional representation in the House.
Now, the question of representation was much more difficult in the, in the two bodies. And in the midst of the debate, small states rallied around what was called the New Jersey Plan. This New Jersey Plan was introduced by William Patterson of New Jersey. And he rep—him, excuse me, Patterson and this, uh, New Jersey Plan represented the small state advocates, such as New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware. Representatives from these states felt that the smaller states would be overwhelmed by Madison's government. So they submit their own plan. And this plan was an amended version of the Articles of Confederation. The New Jersey Plan would give Congress the authority to tax and regulate commerce. The plan retains state sovereignty as well as state equality in Congress, but it did allow for a more powerful national government, one that could coerce the states, and one that made laws and treaties made by the national government the supreme law of the land. And those laws and treaties, those federal laws and treaties would be enforceable in state courts. The New Jersey Plan recognized that the lack of an executive was, in fact, a weakness of the Articles of Confederation. So they wanted an executive committee selected by Congress, which would have an, an executive function. This executive committee would appoint the Supreme Court. So instead of one independent executive in Madison's Virginia Plan, you have an executive committee.
And this New Jersey Plan, the New Jersey Plan was debated for days. However, it was voted down by vote of 7 to 3. But the plan was important because small state advocates would not endorse Madison's government. And this was clear. So they demand a compromise, right? They don't have enough votes to pass their plan, but they have just enough votes to keep Madison's plan from passing.
Now, in the midst of disputes, Hamilton submitted his own plan, which consisted of an extraordinary powerful national government with an elected monarch and an elected Senate for life. Hamilton's plan was not voted on at all. Had it been voted on, it would have been given zero votes. Shortly thereafter, the question of representation was given to a compromise committee. And the committee was made up of a moderate from each state. What comes out of this committee is what's known as the Great Compromise. The Great Compromise. And this compromise specified that the lower house would get one representative per 40,000 population from each state. Now, at the time, they wrote this compromise, 40,000 seemed like an extraordinary number to them. However, on that basis, today there'd be around 7,500 representatives in Congress if we kept that, uh, ratio of one representative per 40,000 population. But to them, at the time, that seemed like a large number.
Um, another part of this compromise, this Great Compromise, was that money bills would have to begin in the House of Representatives. The principle of state equality would be upheld in the Senate. Each state would have two senators, and essentially every state would get one vote. Elbridge Gerry, who is a strong nationalist, suggested that you should have the Senate vote by individuals rather than by state. And that worked because it wasn't as clear-cut as state representation. I mean, essentially, it's the same thing if the state, the two delegates from each state, the two senators from each state stuck together on their votes. But if they don't, it's, it's more democratic. So the convention accepted this Great Compromise on July 15th. So the representation in Congress, this bicameral legislature consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate, is now solved with the Great Compromise.
So now we're going to turn to the next problem, and that's the federalism problem. What federal powers did the national government have? How much power should they be given? Where should sovereignty lie, right? They're dealing with who determines who has what power, the national government or the state. Remember, the Virginia Plan stated that that national powers be given in the broadest possible terms. Under Madison's plan, there's no question who would be sovereign; it would be the national government. But gradually, the Virginia Plan was undercut. And two things happened to undercut the plan. Sometime in July, there was a shift in direction. There was a shift away from a kind of blanket grant of authority to specific, to a specific delegation of powers. Instead of saying, you, you know, the federal government has all the power or can determine its own powers, right? They shift to granting the federal government specific delegated powers. Now, there's no point in the record suggesting this shift, no exact turning point. So we don't know exactly when this occurred. It probably came to them gradually, uh, incrementally. But nonetheless, this shift occurred away from kind of a blanket authority to the national government to a, uh, specific iteration or delegation of powers.
So in terms of delegating powers, or these delegated powers, the members of the Constitutional Convention began working towards listing the powers that the government would have, right? This is a critical difference because if you list the powers that the federal government will have, this is now a government of limited authority rather than unlimited authority, right? You tell the government specifically, you can do this. You're granting them limited authority. Madison went along because there was still this idea that the national government could coerce the states. So he's thinking, yeah, go ahead, great. Grant limited authority through these delegated powers to the national government. But in the end, if the national government has the power to coerce states, then the national government still has all the power. So he's, he's going along with this, right? His, his confidence rested on the idea that state coercion was part of both plans, the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan. But the second thing that happens along with this shift towards a delegation of powers was that state coercion was gradually rejected as well, even by the nationalists. This gets dropped gradually. And we can speculate with confidence, excuse me, confidence as to why. Madison recognized that he was creating a government that had its own officials. And if the government has its own officials, it can enforce its own laws. Therefore, it can act directly on individuals rather than acting on the states. It can act directly on individuals. Now, the Articles of Confederation only reached the states and it could only request, as I mentioned, but if it could act on individuals, the government is going to have broader powers. If you can act on individuals, you don't need to coerce the state governments. The convention comes to this recognition gradually. So that notion of coercion becomes meaningless. Nationalists, in turn, seem to be advocating its repeal. And this makes the Constitution more appealing to moderates. Madison joined in dropping state coercion eventually because the government also had the ability in Congress, in the Virginia Plan, to veto state legislation. So he could feel confident in abandoning, abandoning state coercion and still having a national government that retained, uh, greater sovereignty than the state governments. But Madison eventually lost on this issue as well. So Madison lost a broad government, broad governmental power. He lost the state coercion argument. And then he loses veto of state legislation. And there were a number of arguments raised against congressional veto. Roger Sherman of Connecticut pointed out that giving Congress this power would be a burden on Congress, right? It would have to rule on every law enacted by every state legislature. Every law would have to be deemed valid or invalid. So it would lead to this kind of endless debate and take up too much of Congress's time. Governor Morris, an able leader from Pennsylvania, also noted that the, excuse me, the Judiciary was in a better position to rule on the constitutionality of state laws than Congress. And this is that concept again that I've mentioned a couple times of judicial review, right? The Judiciary gets to rule on the constitutionality of laws. So the ultimate result is, in that mid-July, the convention gave up the idea of a congressional veto.
At this point in time, Madison must have felt devastated. In effect, he was losing the government that he had envisioned with the Virginia Plan. The question of who was to interpret the constitutional document was not something that Madison thought much about, but this was a huge power. And the convention adopted one statement, it implied that the final arbiter of the Constitution would be the state court. And it's called the Supremacy Clause, which is Article VI of the Constitution, the Supremacy Clause. And this clause says that the Constitution, laws, and treaties are the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby. This meant that federal law would be supreme because the Constitution, right, is a federal document, treaties are federal documents. So federal law will be supreme. The Supremacy Clause, and states in turn would have to enforce this federal law in their courts. So federal law is supreme, but the states get to determine the extent of federal authority. And this was adopted on the floor, which kind of made states' rights people happy because state judges would determine how far to act under these laws. So, as I said before, Madison must have been devastated. But Madison eventually would win without even knowing it, because the convention did not anticipate the Judiciary Act of 1789, where decisions of the state courts could be appealed to federal courts. So no longer would state courts be the only arbiter of federal law. But I mean, these people at the Constitutional Convention, right, this is 1787. They don't know that this is going to happen yet. But ultimately, federal power would be supreme because you could appeal state decisions to federal courts.
Also, on the floor, at the same time, there was a series of restrictions on states adopted by the convention. And there weren't, excuse me, there was not much debate over these restrictions. And these provisions reflected those people who wanted to limit the state legislatures' power. We talked about this last lecture. The state legislatures were full of new men, they were too democratic. And these people thought that what would result out of this kind of republicanism was tyranny of the mob, anarchy, chaos, whatever you want to call it. So these people are trying to limit the state legislatures' power. In Article I, Section 10, it states that individual states can't make treaties with foreign lands, that they can't coin money. Remember that was a big problem with the Articles of Confederation government, that it did not prohibit states from coining money. So now, in Article I, Section 10, states can't coin money, they can't make paper money, and no state could impair the obligation of contract, right? This means no debt or stay laws, and no bankruptcy laws. In addition, states couldn't have troops or commission ships. But it, it did not undermine states in terms of local affairs. And in terms of local affairs, everyone seemed united in the principle that states would have control. States are the ones that deal directly with the people, right, within their own boundaries, local governments. The national government, they felt, should deal with people more indirectly. The Constitution guaranteed a republican form of government for every state. This was known as the Shay's Rebellion clause, and it ensures that there won't be rebellions, and if there are, the states can put them down.
Now, another issue that the convention faced was how much power the president, or at that time, the executive, because they didn't know what to call the president, should have. And there were two schools of thought about the executive at the Constitutional Convention. One, made up of most small state advocates and moderates, wanted a weak executive in relation to the legislature. They want an executive that is chosen by the legislature and answerable to the to the legislature. This kind of legislative ascendancy, unchallenged. They fear a strong executive because they fear the capacity of a demagogue to lead the people astray. The second school of thought was from the nationalists, and they want a strong, independent executive chosen by popular vote. That way, the independent would be, excuse me, the executive would be independent of influence by the legislature, right? This executive could stand up to the legislature. The nationalists believe that the executive must have energy, independence, and must be able to act with secrecy and be decisive. They want this executive to shape, form policy. Therefore, they wanted him to have the capacity to act quickly and decisively. They're less concerned about the executive shaping domestic policy.
So the question of how the executive is elected becomes critical. And this question of executive election is given to the Committee on Postponed Matters. And of course, the Electoral College is the outcome of the committee. And they came up with this Electoral College through a sort of classic compromise. Remember, this Constitution is a set of compromises. The group was fearful of popular election because they feared that the executive would become unmanageable and only respond to the people at large. But the nationalists were equally fearful of an executive selected by Congress because they feared that the executive would ultimately just be an errand boy for Congress, a figurehead. So the Electoral College is the compromise. It doesn't rely on Congress to select the executive, and it doesn't rely on popular vote to select the executive. In its original form, it was a body created simply to elect the president. Each state was to have one member for each member of Congress, and each state could determine how to select Electoral College members. The electors can vote for anyone they choose, as long as one of the people they choose is not from their home state. And each member was to have two votes. Now, obviously, the original proposal didn't take into account the forming of political parties and this idea of running mates. And it results in some strange outcomes. In the election of 1796, the third presidential election, members of opposing parties elected the president and the vice president: Adams from the Federalists and Jefferson from the Jeffersonians, otherwise known as the Democratic-Republicans, right? So you have your president is from a different party than your vice president.
There's another provision of the Electoral College. The original committee recommended that if no candidate won a majority of electoral votes, the Senate could be called upon to determine the president. But on the convention floor, it, it was changed from the Senate choosing to the House choosing. And the House would have to vote by state, not individually. There's this kind of theory that the members of the convention assumed that as long as George Washington was willing to serve, he would be president. But that after Washington, no one would be able to get a majority of the vote in the Electoral College. So basically, the House would end up choosing from the top three, which have been chosen by the Electoral College, right? People who framed the Constitution believed that in the future, after Washington stepped down, the House of Representatives would ultimately choose the president, and the Electoral College would essentially just be a kind of filtering mechanism to get the top three candidates. So from the beginning, the Electoral College is a compromising device. But as we know, it never worked as it was intended to. And then the 12th Amendment ended up modifying it. The Electoral College was intended to create a kind of distance between the people and the president. And it was assumed that state legislators, which had been elected by the people, would select members of the Electoral College, who then selected the president.
So what powers were the president given? Well, presidential authority was expanded during the convention. The Virginia Plan gave the authority to the president to execute national laws. But proposals were adopted that gave the president specific authorities. However, along with each authority that was given to the president or the executive, they gave Congress a check on that power, right? What we see today, or what we know of today, as checks and balances. So, for example, you get a proposal that the president has the power to veto legislation. Well, there's a balance to this, right? The president can veto legislation, but Congress can override that veto with a supermajority, a two-thirds majority. The president was made commander-in-chief. However, as a balance or a check on that power, only Congress could declare war. The president could negotiate treaties with foreign nations, but as a check on that power, those treaties had to be ratified by the Senate. The president could appoint ambassadors, could appoint federal judges, could appoint federal officials, but as a check, those appointments must have the advice, consent, and approval of the Senate. So as the president's powers were increased, the length of his term in office was decreased, originally from seven years all the way down to four years. But now, instead of a prohibition on reelection, there was the possibility of reelection. It's important to note that none of the delegates at the time that granted these executive authorities and then placed checks on those executive authorities envisioned this sort of modern presidency that we have today. There was no discussion of the president being a policy maker beyond foreign policy. Most expected some leadership from the executive, but not the leadership of Congress. And you have two future presidents at the convention, and those presidents, future presidents, could assess what the convention was trying to do with the presidency. George Washington and James Madison, and both, when they were president, were very modest in the use of presidential power, right? Because they understood what the convention wanted. In Article II, Section 4, there's a section on impeachment. This is another check on the executive. So remember, with each power granted to the executive, some sort of check on that power was also placed into the Constitution.
So let's turn now to the Judiciary. Article I is the longest article of the Constitution. It deals with the legislature because that's what they deemed most important. Article II dealt with the executive, which was shorter than Article I. And finally, Article III deals with the Judiciary. And Article III on the Judiciary is very brief. Not many served as judges at the convention, and there was very little debate over this article. There was absolute agreement that there should be an independent Judiciary. But as to jurisdiction, this article only says that the national Judiciary shall deal with all cases arising under the Constitution or laws and treaties enacted by Congress, or cases involving a federal official or the high seas. So virtually all court action would be contained within state courts. That is, except when there's interstate suing, right, state versus state, or an individual from one state suing an individual from another state. That fell within federal jurisdiction. The only real debate comes over whether or not to have national courts. Everyone agreed that there should be a national Supreme Court, but whether to have additional lower federal courts was debated. Advocates of state authority said that having lower federal courts would be duplicating the state's authority. And these advocates won the debate. The Constitution only creates one Supreme Court. This was another loss for Madison because he wanted federal judges and he wanted federal laws. But he received a compromise because implemented was a provision allowing Congress to create "such other courts as they see fit." And in Congress's first session in 1789, they created a federal system of courts. The question of judicial review was not debated. But they did anticipate that courts would declare acts unconstitutional. And at the time, we assume that they meant that the courts, the federal courts, could declare state laws unconstitutional. There was no clear determination whether courts could declare congressional laws unconstitutional. They only believed that courts could declare state laws unconstitutional for sure. Now, there were also, there was also never any vote on this judicial review, or no specific item in the Constitution that says which laws courts could declare unconstitutional. We know that Madison would have endorsed it, the same with Hamilton. They both wanted larger, uh, more, excuse me, broader national authority. But there's no way to know about everybody else. So the idea was, or the understanding was, that federal courts could declare state laws unconstitutional. But we have no idea, there's no understanding on, uh, federal courts declaring federal laws unconstitutional.
So that is the formation of the three branches of government. Next, I want to turn towards slavery in the Constitution because the Constitution recognized slavery. The United States, politically and most importantly economically, was built on a system of slavery. And the Constitution recognized this. And it recognized this in three separate places, none of which mentioned the word slavery. Over slavery, there's a North-South split that kind of parallels the conflict between large states and small states. Uh, most historians argue it's a secondary division, but it did shape parts of the Constitution. There's a, a book out there, and I can't think of the title offhand, um, it's called Dark Bargain. That's what it's called, Dark Bargain. It's written by Lawrence Goldstone, and he argues that the slavery division and the Constitutional Convention was primary, not secondary. And his book places this division at the forefront of the founding. Either way you look at it, slavery is recognized in the founding document, and there's a split. There's a series of issues related to the West, but there's a series of issues related directly to slavery. And you get argument over this in August at the convention, just as the temperature is heating up. There were heated debates over taxation, commerce power, and slavery. And it reflects the fact that the revolutionary era witnessed the beginnings of the emancipation movement, right? The fact that you would have an argument over slavery's existence at all, or the slave trade, means that the ideas about emancipation and equality that formed during the revolution, that were engendered by the revolution, are beginning to come to fruition, just as Gordon Wood would argue in the book that you're reading for your first paper, and in his longer version of the second half of that book, his Pulitzer Prize-winning Radicalism of the American Revolution.
Now, because of this burgeoning emancipation movement, the South is on the defensive about slavery. And the most famous slavery-related compromise was the Three-Fifths Compromise. And the Three-Fifths Compromise was a classic political compromise. It's all about political power. The South demanded that slaves should be counted as persons for the purpose of the House and Electoral College, right? If we're basing the House and the Electoral College on proportional representation, then the more people you have, the more power and influence you will, you will have. So the South wants slaves, representatives, persons, to enhance Southern white votes. And this is despite the fact that slaves were not considered citizens. Southerners argued that they must be counted nonetheless. And Northerners registered little protest over this. A couple of states, that it would mean over-representation of Southern whites. While most did not necessarily hate slavery, most hated the slave trade. And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts argued that if the South could count slaves, why couldn't the North count cattle, right? Because slaves were considered property under law. It may seem an insensitive argument to us right now, but it was a logical argument at the time. If they're both considered property under the law, why should one be counted as a person and the other not? But these people that opposed slavery knew that if the South wasn't given this concession, the South wouldn't get behind the Constitution. So Northerners pressed for a compromise and pointed out that in the Articles of Confederation government and in the New Jersey Plan, for the purposes of representation, slaves counted as three-fifths of a person. So they ended up counting 60% or three-fifths of slaves. Now, this doesn't say anything about how blacks were to be considered. Free blacks counted as a whole person in both the North and South. The Three-Fifths Compromise was adopted with one descending vote, and that came from New Jersey. So this is a Three-Fifths Compromise, is a political compromise, all about political power for the purposes of proportional representation. And Southern whites, by counting their slaves as three-fifths of a person, gain, uh, more power.
If the 3/5ths Compromise was a classic political compromise, then the Commerce Compromise, many historians believe, was kind of a dirty compromise. Some historians call this the Commerce Compromise, the dirty compromise. It's a lot more controversial and it's a lot harder to defend, and it has to do with the slave trade.
The slave trade was an ugly business. It didn't fit any of these Republican principles that came out of the Revolutionary War. In fact, George Mason of Virginia, who was a slave owner himself, said that the slave trade would bring the Judgment of Heaven upon the Constitutional Enterprise. Virginia and Maryland joined with most of the rest of the states to end the importation of slaves. So you have all northern states and Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, uh, wanting to end the importation of slaves. There's this kind of expectation that Congress, which had authority over foreign commerce, would prohibit the importing of slaves to the new nation.
But Georgia and South Carolina felt that they could not survive without a constant influx of new slaves. Right, Virginia and Maryland, it was okay for them to vote against the importation of slaves because they had a surplus of slaves and they didn't need to import them. And the fewer slaves being imported, right, meant that those surplus of slaves in Virginia and Maryland would be worth more when they went to sell slaves. But Georgia and South Carolina, on the other hand, believed that they needed this kind of constant influx of slaves from Africa. Georgia was a new state with limited population, and South Carolina relied heavily on rice plantations along the coast. And rice plantations are known as the killing fields for slaves because of malaria, so they constantly had to replenish the slave population.
Georgia and South Carolina threatened to go home if the convention did not adopt a resolution prohibiting Congress from terminating the terminating the slave trade. But most delegates knew that this threat, this threat to walk out by South Carolina and Georgia, was an idle threat, especially in the case of Georgia. Right, Georgia is a new frontier community that needed a strong national government to provide protection from the Spanish to the South and the Indians to the West. So if Georgia walked out of the Constitutional Convention and didn't accept the federal government, they would be off on an island of their own. And this isn't plausible because they need a strong national government to protect them. Right, they have Native Americans in the West on their western border, and they have the Spanish on their southern border. So it's not plausible that Georgia would have actually walked out and not accepted the the national government, which meant, in turn, that South Carolina would be left all alone. Well, South Carolina could not have survived outside the Union as the only independent state.
So the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina, they could have been faced down. But Georgia and South Carolina knew that they could get North Carolina to see it their way. And new states from New England, such as Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, were trying to win over the convention to give Congress the authority to regulate trade within the US. And they needed a supermajority vote, which had nothing to do with slavery. They need a supermajority of vote in order to grant Congress the authority to regulate trade with inside the US. Many states were nervous about about granting this authority to the national government. They felt it was too much power to give to Congress.
So the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina went to these New England delegates and swapped votes, slavery votes for Commerce votes. And the deal was done. It's called the Dirty Compromise. Both provisions carried by six to four votes. So Congress adopts a provision that kept Congress from terminating the slave trade from Africa for at least 20 years. Right, it would be revisited in 1808. And on the other side, a provision is adopted that allowed Congress to regulate interest trade trade with a simple majority vote rather than a supermajority vote.
And also at the time of the Commerce Compromise, there's a third place where slavery comes up in the Constitution, and that's with the Fugitive Slave Law, which was adopted. It was the same fugitive slaves law that existed in the Articles of Confederation, and it said that fugitives escaping slavery and fleeing to another state are not free and are to be returned to their owner. So there's these three places in the Constitution that deal with slavery. And then by dealing with slavery the way that the Constitution does at the time it's enacted, it is a pro-slavery document.
Now, the Constitution is completed on September 8th and it's turned over to the committee on style, which puts it into its final shape. This final draft took four days, and it's then sent to the convention floor. It's printed with wide margins to make notes and corrections. Few copies are made. Event it's read to the entire convention, and then it would be discussed item by item, and changes would be made in the margin. Of course, they had to sett on a ratification procedure for the Constitution. They don't want state legislatures to mess with it, so they decide that the Constitution must be ratified by specially elected state conventions. And it this kind of ties in nicely with the concept that the document represents the people of the US, not the people of the states. Also, they decide that once the document was ratified by nine state conventions, it would go into effect. 70% of the 55 delegates endorsed the final document. Three of the 55 left and discussed earlier in the convention. Three who stayed refused to sign. The Constitution was immediately printed at a Philadelphia paper and then distributed to papers across the country. The document was then sent to ratifying conventions, and it created a much stronger national government. It was a compact among the people, not among the states. Right, Preamble says "We the People of the United States." The document was flexible. It could be amended and interpreted broadly, as I've been stressing. Many compromises have been adopted. After all, the delegates were politicians, and those delegates would have to defend the Constitution in their home states in order to get it ratification. And that's probably why the issue of state coercion was dropped. Right, each one of these delegates would have to take the Constitution back home and convince the people that they needed this Constitution and a stronger national government. But some compromises left the Constitution vague. It didn't define with real clarity the relationship between the states and the federal government. More importantly, down the road in our discussion of uh, the buildup to the Civil War, the Constitution did not clarify whether states could succeed. Finally, one last thing I'd like to make about the Constitution is that the vess of some parts of the Constitution and the flexibility of the Constitution because it could be interpreted broadly, there's a lot of room for major fundamental disagree agreements, and we see those disagreements play out throughout American history.
So let's turn now to ratification. And if you're interested in a detailed account of ratification, uh, Pauline Maier wrote an excellent book on the process a couple years back called simply "Ratification." So if this process interests you, I recommend reading it. So let's talk about ratification. This is the last process in Constitution making. Right, the convention decided to send the new document to the state ratifying conventions because they didn't trust state legislatures. So in effect, they're asking each state to call a special election for a state ratifying convention. And when nine states approve the Constitution, it will go into effect. Right, this is a significant difference than the Articles of Confederation because with the Article of Confederation, you needed a unanimous, you needed unanimous consent to alter the Articles. Well, now they're saying we're going to alter, we're not only going to alter the Articles, we're going to toss them out entirely and have the this new Constitution. And oh yeah, it's not going to take a unanimous vote to do it. We're only asking for nine states to approve it. All the states called for a special election except that one holdout, Rhode Island. Now, turnout at these elections was very low. Only 3 to 4% of eligible voters voted. This is the critical document for American government, United States history, and it's hard for us to fathom looking backward and understanding the importance of this document, how only 3% of the eligible voting population could vote, could turn out or chose to turn out to vote for this document. That's because, as I mentioned before, we have the benefit of hindsight. These people at the time didn't know how crucial this document was. Only 3 to 4% of eligible voters voted. We don't really know why people didn't vote. We do know that large parts of the country supported the Constitution and large parts opposed. There were different sentiments region by region. Each side occupied roughly the same amount of territory. Uh, we can make some generalizations about who supported the Constitution and who didn't. Uh, generally, the coastal regions favored the Constitution, and that's logical because the coastal regions are filled with merchants that would like a strong national government, that would like a better economy, that would like better commerce. They would like a a strong power to deal with foreign nations, to interact with foreign nations. Right, they want a strong national government to solidify the United States' place in the world and to help the economy. They want some certainty, some stability in the economy, which a large national government could help to provide. So generally, coastal regions favored the Constitution. Commercial cities favored the Constitution for some of the same reasons I just mentioned. The people that engaged in commerce favored the Constitution. States like Delaware, New Jersey, and Georgia are totally dependent on trade, and they are among the first to ratify the new document. Uh, the central regions of states are generally Anti-Federalist. Right, Federalists are those that advocate and promote and support the Constitution. Thus, Anti-Federalist are the was the name given to those that opposed the Constitution. So generally, the central region of the states are are Anti-Federalist. As I said, Delaware met right away and unanimously adopted the Constitution. And states actually only voted where there is a contest. And in a lot of areas, there wasn't a contest. People felt that their choices felt the same, so there's no reason to vote. But the important division is commerce, agriculture, and small, self-sufficient people were opposed. They were generally Anti-Federalists. People in favor of commercial trade, as I said, were proponents of the Constitution. What that means is if that division holds over agriculture versus commerce, that the majority of Americans were probably opposed to the Constitution.
So let's now talk about these two sides, the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists. Anti-Federalists uniformly feel that the Constitution is bad because they feel that it will destroy the states. They fear that the government will become a unitary system. States would end up administrating traders with no independent authority. And they see the key power as the power to tax, and they fear this the most. They think that giving this power to the federal government is a fundamental danger to state sovereignty. Right, it's a direct tax on individuals, and Congress would have no limit on this power. They just fought a war over localism and this idea that taxes should be imposed at the local level. So of course, they fear giving a national government the power to tax. They agreed that the government needed revenue, and that the weakness, one of the biggest weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, was the weakness of the government's finances. Right, last lecture I mentioned that the government was bankrupt essentially. So the government needs a source of income, and these Anti-Federalists recognize that. So many said that they would support an impost amendment of 5%, a kind of federal income based on trade. But in the Constitution, they see a Congress with the authority to levy taxes of any kind. They also fear the army and the president as commander-in-chief of that army. They want the military to be under state control. They feel that a national standing army would destroy liberty. Right, there's always been this aversion in English culture to a standing army. They felt that the army would be an agency for tax collection, and that it would destroy democratic government. They see in the Constitution no restrictions on the use of the army. I see no real rest rint on federal power. So they want a Bill of Rights, some sort of written guarantee against federal power. And they thought that the absence of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution was part of a larger conspiracy, and they felt that a Bill of Rights was left off on purpose, basically, so the federal government could extinguish liberty. Patrick Henry gave a famous speech which centered on one fundamental principle, and that principle is that power once given can never be taken except without revolution and violence. His argument is that if you give a little power now, you can give more power later if needed. But if you give it all all now to the federal government, you can never take it back. This was human nature. Anti-Federalists feared an arist an excuse me, an aristocratic conspiracy. Right, remember that Federalists were kind of these more prominent elite citizens that were suspicious of the mob. So there's reason to fear this aristocratic conspiracy. There's a lot of haste in the ratification process, which is also conducive to a notion of conspiracy. There's the secrecy of the Constitutional Convention. Right, secrecy is conspiratorial. They felt that Congress was too small to represent such a large nation. They feared a lack of term limits, and ultimately, they fear the establishment of some type of a new royal court where wealthy office holders would be levying taxes from far away, similar to what they perceived was happening in England with the House of Commons and the King. They also argued that the notion, they argued the notion that republics were fragile and that big republics cannot exist because of all of the competing conflicts of interest. So these Anti-Federalists fear that eventually, through this conspiracy, the United States would fall prey to the same problems, the same tyranny that they had just fought the Revolutionary War over. These are the Anti-Federalists, opponents of the Constitution, and more than likely, the majority of Americans felt this way.
Now, on the other side, the people advocating for this new Constitution, supporting this new Constitution, they were known as the Federalists. And Madison answered the Anti-Federalist fear of a fragile Republic, especially large Republics, and he talked about the most important federal power in Federalist Paper number 10, which he authored and directed specifically at this concern of a fragile Republic. Madison argued that the way to promote liberty is to actually have a very large Republic. That a very large Republic was more likely to preserve liberty. It would have a multiplicity of interests and factions, and there would be constantly shifting alliances in a large Republic. To get what they want out of the government, one or two interests would lock themselves into permanent despotism in a small Republic. But in a large Republic, no one group will ever gain dominance. This is truly a modern concept. The Federalist arguments are pretty simple. They rely heavily on nationalism. They argued that the revolution created one nation, not 13 separate nations, and the Articles of Confederation had not solidified that one nation. So a new document was needed. And the Federalists are seeking one large community to encompass 13 smaller ones. They're asking for the states to sacrifice a little sovereignty for the good of all. Right, that's language that those supporting the ideology of republicanism can relate to, sacrificing for the good of all. Federals hammer at the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, especially the financial and diplomatic problems. Also, they rely on the fact that the Anti-Federalists know that the system is not working. And unlike the Anti-Federalists, the Federalist at least have an answer. In more closed quarters, trying to get fundraising from elites, they stress the imperfections of state constitutions. They stress that they are creating a large Republic to end the assault on property. And they talk about the filtration of talent. That there's too many ordinary individuals, these new men that have emerged in state legislatures, and they want to put in a process of filtration and block those new men from making it to the national government, and that way the scum won't rise to the top, the cream will. Of course, the Constitution's eventually ratified and adopted. So the Federalists win. And there's some reasons why the Federalist win. The framers of the Constitution stumbled through Philadelphia, but they did one thing absolutely right. They prevented a kind of killer clause from ruining the Constitution. They got rid of the federal veto of all of state legislatures. They got rid of coercion of the states. So they get rid of any sort of clause that's that would signal a death now when it came to the public ratifying the Constitution that the public would absolutely reject. However, the failure to include a Bill of Rights almost killed the Constitution. So the first reason the Federalist won is that pre they prevented placing some sort of killer clause in the Constitution. A second reason why the Federalists won is the Federalists had the support of the two most widely known Americans, this kind of celebrity support, if you will, George Washington and Ben Franklin. Very few other individuals were actually known outside of their home state, but George Washington and Ben Franklin were national celebrities. Both supported the new document without qualifications, and this was vital. The Federalists were politically adept. They had a lot of political skill. And and finally, another advantages the Federalists had and a reason why they won is they had a head start. And it wasn't a small head start. It was a solid head start. Some states were so desperate to ratify that between December 7th and January 8th, 1787, 1788, one month, you get five quick ratifications. And in each case, or at least in four of the five cases, the outcome is overwhelming. These states ratified the Constitution before the Anti-Federalists, before the opponents of the Constitution could even organize. So there's a head start there. Also, the Federalists were willing to use certain devices to get that Constitution ratified. One of the more interesting episodes and and uh, probably ethically unsound events occurred in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, there was a battle in the state legislature over whether to call elections to hold a ratifying convention. There was a lot of support in Philadelphia and the surrounding area, but Western Pennsylvania was unsympathetic. So what the Federalists wanted to do do was to get the Federalist to act quickly before the Anti-Federalists could organize. Now, the Anti-Federalists were aware of this, so the Anti-Federalists left the state so there wouldn't be a quorum, there wouldn't be enough people to form a quorum and vote to hold a ratifying convention. If the Anti-Federalists weren't around, 19 of these Anti-Federalists hid in a board in a excuse me, a rooming house, a kind of boarding house in Philadelphia. So there's no quorum. But the Federalists didn't give up. The Federalist decided to hire thugs to kidnap, to capture and kidnap two of the Anti-Federalists to make a quorum. They tied these two Anti-Federalists to chairs, taped their mouth shut, and then they had a vote, and the vote was 45 to to in favor of a r ratifying convention. So because of this delay, Pennsylvania was the second state to ratify. Delaware had been the first. Then Connecticut, Georgia, and New Jersey quickly followed. So there's this kind of initial momentum that benefited the Federalists. Three states officially initially voted no. Nor new Hamp, excuse me, New Hampshire and North Carolina wouldn't ratify it. Rhode Island, as I mentioned, wouldn't even call an election for a convention. They just submitted the question as a referendum to the electorate. So Rhode Island votes individually on the Constitution, and they voted 10 to1 to reject it. It becomes clear that the key states are Massachusetts, Virginia, New York. Now, in all three of these states, especially Massachusetts and New York, a majority of original delegates opposed the new Constitution. Virginia may be a tossup, but the majority of those elected opposed the Constitution as well. So it took political skill to get through ratification. Massachusetts was the critical test. Eventually, it's ratified there with key support from John Hancock. After Massachusetts ratifies, other states fall in line, and nine states ratify the Constitution by June of 1788. But two critical states remain: Virginia and New York. Still had not ratified, and without them, the nation would have been divided. Remember, they said the convention, when nine states ratify the Constitution is enacted, but they needed Virginia, New York. One out of every five American citizens lived in Virginia. That's how big of a state and important in state Virginia was at the time. Both states pressured the issue that there was no Bill of Rights in the Constitution. So Madison hinted that the first order of business if the Constitution was adopted would be a Bill of Rights. So there's promises of an attached Bill of Rights. Madison also made deals for jobs, for patronage, if the the Constitution was adopted. Also, what gave Madison a boost in New York and Virginia was that Washington agreed to be the first president, which was significant. People revered Washington, so they accepted the fact that he would be the first executive. Eventually, by August of 1788, 11 states had ratified. They choose delegates to the Electoral College. Electors choose Washington to become president. In February of 1789, North Carolina, remember, there's two holdouts now. North Carolina ratifies in November 1789, and Rhode Island eventually ratifies in May of 1790. So it took until May of 1790 for all 13 states to ratify the Constitution.
Uh, one final note I'd like to make about the Federalist Papers. Uh, The Federalist Papers are sometimes worried. They're kind of the most important work in uh, political science, and this is kind of a common belief. The papers consist of 85 letters, and these letters are opinion uh, editorial pieces that are reprinted in newspapers, and they're written by three men: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Hamilton wrote the majority. He wrote 51 of the 85 editorial pieces. Madison wrote 26. Jay wrote five, and then two were the product of close collaboration between Madison and Hamilton. Now, it's essential to understand that The Federalist Papers were written for partisan and political purposes. They were propaganda pieces. So to discern original intent from The Federalist Papers, to do that is to make a mistake because they're just one perspective on that original intent, one side's argument. They are are political propaganda. They're important nonetheless, but they are political propaganda, and that must be understood. They're written in the middle of the ratifying disputes in order to convince people to ratify, to persuade people to accept the new Constitution. The initial ones appear at the beginning of ratification, and they'll run all the way through New York's ratification. And New York was the principal target of The Federalist Papers, and they're kind of a debater's handbook written to convince delegates who are opposed to the Constitution. As I said, they center around the explanation of a federal system of government, and they extol the virtues of federalism. They're an indictment of the Articles of Confederation. They're an analysis, excuse me, an analysis in defense of the new Constitution as an instrument of federalism. There's a lot of philosophy and homespun ideas included. But as I said, you have to keep in mind that they don't necessarily represent the thinking of the 55 individuals who wrote the Constitution. Right, remember Madison left the Constitutional Convention feeling defeated. Hamilton's ideas weren't taken seriously at the convention, and Jay had left in the middle of convention. So they have to be seen as an expression of partisanship, not as an expression of original intent.
I am going to end there. Thank you for staying with me this long. Uh, next lecture, we're going to turn to organizing the new government. Right, we have the Constitution now. Now we need to organize the new government. Remember that your first paper, the Gordon Wood paper, is due this Sunday, July 22nd, by midnight. You need to cement that through Blackboard. And if you have questions, please email me or post them on the discussion board. Thank you.