(Continued from Robertson.)

Dividing Government Authority

Prior to the Convention, Americans took for granted the principle that sovereignty could not be divided among governments in the same area. They accepted British legal scholar Sir William Blackstone’s contention (1765–69) that sovereignty must be lodged in a single “supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority.” Accordingly, Madison, Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, and Rufus King insisted that national authority could not be shared with the states (May 30, June 8, June 9, June 19).

From the start, Sherman took the lead in making the innovative counterargument that the state and national governments “should have separate and distinct jurisdictions” (June 7). Ellsworth’s succinct formulation, “We were partly national; partly federal,” irked Madison at the Convention, but it accurately expressed Connecticut’s aspiration for Constitutional design as well as the working rules of the existing political system (June 29, July 14).

As soon as the Convention adopted the bicameral compromise, several delegates from the South decisively shifted to become “state federalists” who supported explicit protections for the states’ policy prerogatives. Edmund Randolph and most of South Carolina’s delegates broke with Madison’s original plan and called for limited, enumerated national powers (July 16). “The security the Southern States want,” said Pierce Butler of South Carolina, “is that their negroes may not be taken from them” (July 13; cf. Pinckney, July 23).

South Carolina’s urge to protect its vital economic assets played into Connecticut’s hands. Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Georgia joined the four economically disadvantaged states to remove the national veto from the plan (July 17). The Committee of Detail’s August 6 draft limited national authority to commerce “with foreign Nations & amongst the several States,” thus narrowing the national authority to international and interstate relations.

While many northerners inside and outside Madison’s original coalition resolutely opposed slavery, Connecticut played a pivotal role as a New England delegation that defended the South’s policy prerogatives.

Yet another committee developed a grand compromise on these sticky issues of commercial authority. The committee allowed the import of African slaves until 1800 while requiring only simple legislative majorities to enact commercial treaties (August 24). This compromise allowed that the national government could provide commercial treaties required by national sovereignty, but it could not interfere with the way a state managed economic assets it considered vital, even when state policy protected a practice as reprehensible as slavery (August 29).

Protecting State Agency in National Policy-Making

After July 16, the struggle to control the national policy-making process focused on specific choices about the powers and selection of Congress, the president, and the courts. Once the Convention had agreed to make the Senate the agent of the state governments, Madison and several allies took up the fight to make the president independent of Congress. Sherman advanced proposals to make national policy-makers as dependent on the Senate as possible (July 17, July 18, August 24).

The Committee of Detail’s August 6 draft was more consistent with Sherman’s preferences than Madison’s. State legislatures would directly choose and pay U.S. Senators and would determine voter qualifications, districts, and time for U.S. House elections. Congress would appoint the president.

When the Convention reached an impasse on presidential selection, Sherman again urged the delegates to create a committee to deal with such unfinished business. On September 4, this committee recommended a grand compromise on the presidency, establishing what would later become known as the Electoral College. State legislatures would determine how presidential electors would be chosen. The number of electors allocated to a state would equal the sum of its House and Senate seats.

The committee also compromised on the selection of other officers and judges by providing for presidential appointment with a Senate veto (September 6-7). Finally, the committee provided that the president would have power to make treaties but would need the approval of a two-thirds majority of the Senate (September 4).

When the Convention reconsidered the Constitutional amendment process in its final week, Sherman proposed that Congress submit amendments to the states. The Convention approved this method, specifying ratification by three-quarters of the states. Rutledge insisted that the slave trade be placed beyond amendment until 1808, which the Convention overwhelmingly approved (September 10).

On its last full day of debate, Sherman moved to add that “no State shall without its consent be… deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” The Convention voted unanimously for equal state representation in the Senate, which became the only provision that could never be changed by Constitutional amendment (September 15).

The Influence of Madison’s Convention Opponents

James Madison played a principal role in bringing the U.S. Constitution into existence. Without his efforts it is hard to imagine how the delegates would have produced a document endorsed by political leaders from every state but Rhode Island. His Convention notes remain the most definitive record of its proceedings.

His tactic for popularly elected state ratifying conventions (which succeeded despite Sherman’s opposition) and his vigorous advocacy of the Constitution in New York and Virginia probably were necessary for the Constitution’s adoption. Perhaps the most important proponent of religious freedom in the United States, Madison shepherded the Bill of Rights through the first Congress. As a leader in the House of Representatives, President George Washington’s sometime ghostwriter, founder of the Democratic Republican party, Secretary of State, President, and esteemed elder statesman, Madison subsequently exercised a singular influence in Constitutional development.

Bringing the Constitution into existence was very different from designing its provisions, however. Madison failed to persuade the delegates to include the three most significant features of his Spring, 1787, plan for reconstituting government, including broad national authority to regulate commerce and veto state laws, the elimination of state agency in national policy-making, and making relative population or wealth the basis for apportioning seats in both the House and Senate.

Evidently, the states outside of Madison’s coalition considered the Constitution a success for their interests. Just as in the Confederation Congress, Connecticut would continue to enjoy a one-thirteenth share in selecting important national policy-makers: Connecticut would fill one-thirteenth of the seats in the new U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and cast one-thirteenth of the votes in the Electoral College. Connecticut’s delegates had secured a satisfactory distribution of national and state public goods. “Some additional powers are vested in congress, which was a principal object that the states had in view in appointing the convention. Those powers extend only to matters respecting the common interests of the union, and are specially defined, so that the particular states retain their sovereignty in all other matters.” Madison would not have been able to disagree with this assessment.