This chapter begins in this introduction by providing an overview of how the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia took shape and by summarizing the debates on which the delegates focused for almost four months, between May 25 and Sept. 17. See below for the website from which this overview is taken.

The remaining sections of this chapter provide excerpts from the Convention debates themselves, which are based entirely on Madison’s notes. These notes were not published until a few years after Madison’s death in 1836, no doubt partly because he and all the other delegates had agreed that the Convention discussions should take place in secret.

The Selection of the Delegates

Virginia. Madison and Washington agreed that the principles of the Revolution of 1776 were in danger due to a weak continental arrangement and reckless state legislatures.

Madison persuaded the Virginia Legislature to implement the challenge of the Annapolis Convention and invite all the other states to also reconsider the status of the Articles. He also persuaded the Assembly to be the first to elect delegates. It elected eight, including: George Washington; Edmund Randolph; George Mason; and five foot tall, 120 pound, 36-year-old James Madison.

The Next Five States. Five states followed Virginia’s lead: New Jersey selected five delegates, including William Patterson, who would introduce the “New Jersey Plan;” Pennsylvania eight, including Gouverneur Morris, who spoke more than anyone at the Convention, and 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin; North Carolina five; Delaware five, including John Dickinson; and Georgia four.

So a total of six states had joined with Virginia in forming a “Grand Convention” without waiting for any formal endorsement by the existing government under the Articles of Confederation. Other states, however, were more cautious and wanted the existing Congress to address the legitimacy of such a gathering.

Congress Approves. On 28 February 1787, the Confederation Congress endorsed the meeting of the Grand Convention on “the second Monday in May next.” Exactly what the Congress authorized became a bone of contention. The act of Congress states that a convention of delegates should meet:

for the sole purpose of revising the articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States, render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union.

Did the Congress limit the Convention to the discussion of specific and particular matters or did it empower the Convention to propose whatever alterations the delegates considered were needed?

Six More States Join In. New York was the first state to act after the Congressional endorsement. The Governor George Clinton faction of the New York legislature selected Robert Yates and John Lansing to, in effect, outvote Alexander Hamilton. The New York delegation was not particularly prominent at the Convention. Yates and Lansing left in early July, just prior to the passage of the Connecticut Compromise, and the 32-year-old Hamilton was far more influential in securing the adoption of the Constitution in 1788 than in its framing in 1787.

Five States followed New York’s lead: South Carolina, whose delegates included the assertive and influential cousins General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Charles Pinckney; Massachusetts, whose delegates included Elbridge Gerry, who favored states’ rights; Connecticut, whose delegates included Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, who shaped the “Connecticut Compromise;” Maryland; and New Hampshire, whose delegates only began participating in late July. Rhode Island, the thirteenth state, declined to send delegates.

Rather than amend the Articles of Confederation, the state delegates decided to create an entirely new form of government around a new constitution.

What the Delegates had in Common. The framers were relatively young, well educated, and politically experienced. Like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution was written by delegates immersed in 1) the writings of Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, and Montesquieu, and 2) a world of political experience at both the state and continental level. Both basic documents were written in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, and thirty signers of the Declaration in 1776 played a vital part in the creation and adoption of the Constitution, 1787-1789.

Very few of the delegates selected were present at the appointed time for the meeting of the Grand Convention in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787. On May 25, a quorum of seven states was finally secured. The first order of business was to elect a President, and George Washington was the obvious choice. James Madison took extensive notes of the proceedings and although some scholars have questioned their authenticity and completeness, they remain the primary source for reproducing the conversations at the Convention.

The delegates also agreed that the deliberations would be kept secret. The case in favor of secrecy was that the issues at hand were so important that honest discourse needed to be encouraged and delegates ought to feel free to speak their mind, and change their mind, as they saw fit. Thus, despite the hot summer weather in Philadelphia, the windows were closed and heavy drapes drawn. The merits and demerits of the secrecy rule have been a subject of considerable debate throughout American history.

The Convention as a Four-Act Play

Next, the Teaching American History website, from which this overview is drawn, presents the debates in the useful form of a four-act play.

In Act One of the Convention, Governor Randolph introduces Madison’s fifteen point Virginia Plan at the end of May to “revise the Articles of Confederation.” The convention adopts many of the features of this plan to create a centralized national government by mid June. It rejects two alternatives: the state-based, New Jersey Plan, that argues that the Virginia Plan goes too far, and the Hamilton Plan that claims the Virginia Plan does not go far enough.

Act Two portrays the Convention in crisis, in the sense that the delegates were at a stalemate. Many delegates now argued that the Convention had exceeded the Congressional mandate because the Articles had in fact been scrapped rather than revised. A breakthrough occurred at the end of June when Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut suggested that the U.S. is neither wholly national nor wholly federal but a mixture of both. This recommendation——the Connecticut Compromise——was accepted over Madison’s objections in mid-July.

Act Three focuses on the debates during August over Congressional powers and the balance between national and state powers. Slavery also emerged as a major issue.

Act Four covers the final three weeks of the Convention during the month of September, when it focused on the Presidency. The Electoral College gained support as a compromise, modeled on the Connecticut Compromise: the President would be elected by a combination of people and states.

The Committee of Style wrote the final draft of the Constitution. It included a Preamble and an obligation of contracts clause, both written by Gouverneur Morris, and an enumeration of the powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8. Some delegates wanted the Constitution to include a Bill of Rights. When this was not accepted, a few, including Mason, Elbridge Gerry, and Randolph, refused to sign the Constitution.

Source: This chapter’s materials are adapted from the excellent presentation of the Teaching American History website. This introduction is based on its page Introduction to the Constitutional Convention.

**Note: This is a very rich, reliable, and well organized website, which provides a wealth of detail about every aspect of the Convention. You should consult it cautiously, however, because the inherent interest of the material can easily suck you in! You need to make sure you do not spend too much time learning “extra” material, if that results in not having enough time for the required material (all of which is in the Course Pack).

For more detail, see the above introductory page and follow the links there. There are pages on the above “four acts;” a thorough “introduction to the delegates,” which in turn has links to pages that provide, an alphabetical list of all the delegates, with each one linked to his individual biography (very useful when you want to look up a delegate in whose discussion you become interested); all the delegates listed by age; the delegates listed by education; the delegates listed by occupation and economic interests, etc. Throughout the website the names of the delegates are linked to the above individual biographies. There are also pages that contain an overall calendar-view of four months of debate (titled “Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787”); and a day-by-day summary of the debates that is more detailed than that of the above four-act survey.