University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, September 29, 1987
Tuesday Forum
Alexander Hamilton
George Washington
Framers forge Constitution from diversity
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
'R
Benjamin Franklin was helped forward from his place; afterward it was said the old man wept when he signed.'
Catherine Drinker Bowen author of "Miracle at Philadelphia"
By CALDER M. PICKETT
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Editor's Note: Calder M. Pickett, Clyde M. Reed distinguished professor of journalism, delivered an address, "We the People: 1787 Revisited," on Sept. 16. The following is an excerpt from his speech.
America, 1787. Look at those maps in the history books, and see what a native nation we were then, still the 13 original colonies, states now, the first states beyond the 13 not coming in until the 1790s. Settlement out in Kentucky and Tennessee and the Ohio country, and along the Gulf of Mexico. Settlement, of course, for many generations, in the American Southwest. Steam still wasn't part of our technology. No railroads, no electricity. Primitive roads, and not many of them. You rode a horse, or rode in a wagon or a coach, or traveled by raft or boat or ship.
A popular history called "The Making of a Nation" describes the formation of the Constitution:
"All hopes for the future of America were centered in the Philadelphia convention when it opened in May 1787. If the convention failed to agree on a sound form of government, the young nation might never be bound together into a working union. But how to bring this about? Searching for guidance, the Constitution makers who had assembled in Philadelphia studied the records of ancient Greece and Rome. They delved into the administration of the Carthaginian Republic. They looked at the systems used by aristocratic city-states like Venice and Florence and even examined the workings of tiny federal alliances like those of Switzerland and the Netherlands. Useful parallels abounded. But the delegates soon discovered that no federal government had ever been created that both recognized the coordinate role of its member states and based its power on the consent of the people. Americans were trying to build what had never been built before."
They had been operating under something called the Articles of Confederation, those Americans, but these had proved quite unsatisfactory. It was as though the states of today could be operating without any binding federal structure. We were fortunate to have such a gathering of intelligent gentlemen to write the document, even though such leaders as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were abroad.
The circumstances were not exactly bright, and the weather must have been ghastly, especially in an age of no fans, heavy clothing, and not as many baths as we take today. French women don't breathe. "At each inhaling of air, one worries about the next one. The slightest movement is painful."
Catherine Drinker Bowen, in her book, "Miracle at Philadelphia," writes, "In the Pennsylvania State House, which we call Independence Hall, some 55 delegates, named by the legislatures of 12 states (Rhode Island balked, refusing attendance)."
met in convention, and during a summer of hard work and high feeling wrote out a plan of government which they hoped the states would accept, and which they titled the Constitution of the United States of America."
Few could have expected the convention to succeed. There was the perhaps minor problem of Rhode Island not being there. Delegates were nervous and apprehensive. Sessions were secret, and little information leaked out. These men didn't know that they were writing a "constitution"; the word and the concept would come later. They were there to revise the Articles of Confederation, by instructions of Congress.
The delegates elected the father of our country as the president of the convention, though I don't think he was known as the "father" quite yet. The vote was unanimous. Washington said he wasn't qualified, and he constantly called on God for help, and maybe his modesty was the real thing. He was usually silent, but he voted with Virginia, and he took part in the debate toward the end. Madison was taking notes in the front row of the hall. "As a reporter, Madison was indefatigable, his notes comprehensive, set down without comment or aside." Bowen writes.
And now the proposals began to be placed before the convention. Edmund Randolph, governor of Virginia, presented a plan, proposing "a national government, consisting of a supreme legislative, executive and judicial." His words drew silence, for the concept of a national government was not favored by some. Federal . . . national . . . supreme. All were sticky and troublesome words for some time.
They were debating the word "federalism," and what it meant; James Madison told the delegates that a federal government operates on states, a national government directly on individuals. The word "democracy" was being tossed around, too, and it apparently meant anarchy, mobs and the like to some of the men of 1787.
The delegates considered the idea of the instituting of a national executive, though the term "president"
might be overambitious or of war or might be ill. George Washington sat and listened, most of the people assuming that he would be a man to head the government, what plan came out of the convention.
The idea of a single executive frightened some people, who remembered a single executive called George the Third.
And the Constitutional Convention, and the resolution "that the members of the first branch of the National Legislature ought to be elected by the people of the several States." That meant the House of Representatives, and were those who were opposed to such revolutionary ideas. Charles Pinkney argued that the people were not "fit judges." Property rights were banded about; the convention was a body of propertied men, and we have heard the arguments that our nation was founded by people whose chief motivations were economic.
didn't come along for a time. The idea of a single executive frightened some people, who remembered a single executive called George the third. They argued about the presidential veto. And old Ben Franklin got up and campaigned for a plural executive, because a single executive
They came up with what is called the Sherman Compromise, from Roger Sherman of Connecticut, that the suffrage in the House should be based on the free inhabitants of a state, that in the branch called the Senate there should be one vote from each state.
The convention had opened on May 25. By July 26, a basic plan for the Constitution had gone to committee, and a draft version was sent back. On Sept. 10, the Constitution was agreed upon and referred to a committee of style for the finishing touches. The big task lay ahead: gaining approval of the document. The delegates had gone beyond their assignment; bad of improving the Articles of the Constitution, he drafted something new. The convention also had gone beyond Congress's instructions by ruling that ratification by any nine of the 13 states would be sufficient "for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same."
Catherine Bowen writes vividly about the signing of the Constitution, surely one of the great moments in the history of America. "The moment had come to sign the Constitution. Before the members moved to the table, a motion was made and parliamentary journals and other papers of the Congress went into General Washington's hands, to be retained by him 'subject to the order of Congress, if ever formed under the Constitution.'
"It was now past three o'clock. Members ranged themselves according to the geography of the states, beginning with New Hampshire and going southward. New Hampshire, Massachusetts Connecticut New Jersey Pennsylvania ... Delaware and so on down to Georgia Four men who fiercely opposed the Constitution were absent.
Franklin looking towards the President's chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my life, that I have been able at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun."
"Benjamin Franklin was helped forward from his place; afterward it was said the old man wept when he signed. Following Pennsylvania six states remained; they moved slowly to the table.
Sept. 17, 1787. The Constitution is the member of the convention put together.
"Whilst the last members were signing it," wrote Madison, "Doctor
They wrote an article that set forth the rights and powers of the Congress of the United States, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The second article set forth the rights and powers of the executive branch. The third deal with the judiciary. The fourth deal with the states. The fifth set forth the amendment process; the sixth said that "all bills contracted before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation"; the seventh told how the document was to ratified.
There was no provision for what came to be known as the Bill of
THE FAR SIDE
Rights: The people who wanted ratification had to guarantee that a bill of rights would be added in order to guarantee that ratification.
The battles against ratification were fought out in the large states, in pennsylvania, where the Anti-Federalists tried to delay things, in Massachusetts, in Virginia. Ratification proceeded. On the 21st of June, 1788, New Hampshire, the ninth of the states, ratified, and Virginia followed four days later. Eleven states were now in the Union, but North Carolina gave no approval until 1789, and Rhode Island held out until 1790.
CIVIL
The author of "The Making of a Nation" wrote that "Americans of 1788 greeted its ratification with relief and enthusiasm. Boston, Charleston and New York outdid one another, and ratified the constitution with fetes and processions, but Philadelphia outdid them all in ardor and ingenuity."
And here, in the autumn of '87, 200 years later, we can ask, "Have we done it right?"
What a document, I say. And what a concept, and how it has endured! And how. I think most of us would agree, all Americans, here in the bicecentennial, should be proud of our bicentennial, should provide it, and even get excited on occasion — despite the abuses in our lives.
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