(Continued from Robertson.)

Madison’s Convention Opposition

The most familiar narrative of the Convention frames Madison and his allies as strong nationalists and the opposition as small states simply opposed to the loss of their equal vote in the Confederation Congress. But it is more accurate to understand Madison’s opponents as delegates from a group of states outside Madison’s expected coalition. These seven states were: New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. They cannot be understood simply as small states: South Carolina had a smaller population than Maryland or New York and about the same population as Connecticut. Georgia was one of the four least populous states.

The Economically Disadvantaged States

Madison initially may have been encouraged by the weaknesses of his potential opponents. The complete absence of Rhode Island and the long absences of New York and New Hampshire placed the burden of opposing Madison squarely on four states represented throughout the Convention. These delegates proved to be superbly adept at defending their political interests.

Virginia’s plan particularly sparked opposition from specific states south of Massachusetts and north of Virginia—–Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland—–because these states had substantial economic and political disadvantages compared to their neighbors. They lacked the expanses of land and the long growing season enjoyed by the states to their south. They also lacked the lucrative ports of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and were very vulnerable to exploitative tariffs and regulations from nearby states with these large ports. The Confederation had leveled the playing field somewhat for these states because their equal vote in the Confederation Congress substantially offset their relative economic disadvantages.

With limited resources and significant economic exposure, these states actually had the most stake in nationalizing specific public goods such as coastal defense and tariffs, in blocking other states from restricting commerce, and in enforcing the states’ financial obligations to the Confederation. It was vital for these states to defend their political advantages forcefully. New York was a special case. New York faced the surrender of its lucrative tariff revenues to the national coffers,and thus confronted the largest potential sacrifice of any state.

The representatives from Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland generally sought to maintain their state government’s control over taxes, internal commerce, and regulation inside their borders. Delaware’s Attorney General, Gunning Bedford, Jr., characterized Madison’s Convention strategy explicitly and darkly during the Convention’s most bitter day of debate:

Are not the large States evidently seeking to aggrandize themselves at the expense of the small? They think no doubt that they have right on their side, but interest had blinded their eyes… Can it be expected that the small States will act from pure disinterestedness? (June 30)

The Pivotal Role of Connecticut and Roger Sherman

Connecticut’s delegates led the opposition, relentlessly disputing Madison’s most important Convention proposals. Connecticut took a key role in framing and then defeating the New Jersey Plan, pressing for the “Connecticut” compromise on House and Senate apportionment, providing northern support for protecting the slave trade, and injecting state agency into presidential selection.

Roger Sherman led an unusually cohesive and pragmatic three-man Connecticut delegation. At the Convention, Sherman was the most active spokesman among the Virginia Plan’s opponents. Sherman spoke, made motions, or seconded motions 160 times, much more often than John Dickinson or Maryland’s Luther Martin and 10 times more often than any delegate from New Jersey. Madison himself spoke, made motions, or seconded motions 177 times. Sherman’s talented younger colleague, Oliver Ellsworth, greatly admired Sherman and looked to him as his model.

Thirty years older than Madison, Sherman came to the Convention with a formidable political reputation as a leading American statesman. He had served on the congressional committees that wrote the Resolves of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation. Only Sherman signed all three of these documents and the Constitution. In the mid-1780s Sherman was serving—–simultaneously—–as mayor of New Haven, a member of the Connecticut’s Council of Assistants (which functioned as the state senate), a judge on the Connecticut Superior Court, and a delegate to the Confederation Congress.

Sherman had strong intellectual differences with Madison, preferring that the scope of national authority should be expanded in more limited ways. No one argued more forcefully for the idea of dual sovereignty, insisting that the state and national governments should have discrete areas of policy responsibility (May 30, June 6, June 7). He conceded that the Confederation government required additional powers, “particularly that of raising money” and the national management of currency and interstate commerce. But Sherman insisted from the start that states should retain control of “matters of internal police wherein the general welfare of the United States is not affected” (May 30).

It has been as easy to underestimate Sherman’s influence on the Constitution’s design. Unlike Madison, he left virtually no written record of his Convention preparations or participation. His reported Convention speeches tended to be brief and pragmatic. He did not help write the Federalist papers, and his subsequent political career pales in comparison to Madison’s. He lacked Madison’s talent for academic theory, James Wilson’s earnest support for popular government, and Gouverneur Morris’s talent for sound bites. But his engagement in Constitutional design was far-reaching. The ongoing, implicit discourse between Madison and Sherman is indicated by the strong day-to-day correlation between their speeches and motions.

Sherman managed to serve on five key Convention committees that played a large role in settling many of the Convention’s most fundamental and sensitive political issues: congressional representation, the apportionment of House seats, the national assumption of state debts, the regulation of tariffs and ports, and presidential selection and powers (July 5, July 9, August 18, August 25, August 31). For the most part, the reports of these five committees became incorporated into the final Constitution.

As a result, Constitutional design emerged more as a by-product of many specific design choices than as a deliberate choice of one plan instead of another. The Convention’s choices were “path-dependent,” made in a sequence in which choices reflected political calculations set in motion by earlier choices and then affected subsequent political calculations.

Spoiling Madison’s Political Strategy

Opposition to “proportional,” or population-based representation in Congress was only a part of a broader defense of state agency in national policy-making. The opposition congealed on Monday morning, June 11, when Sherman moved that suffrage in the first house be proportional to free inhabitants and that states be equally represented in the Senate.

Four days later, Madison’s opponents introduced their collective “New Jersey” Plan, aiming to change the agenda by enumerating a limited number of specified public goods minimally necessary for ensuring adequate national power. The New Jersey Plan included most of the additional enumerated powers favored by Sherman and Dickinson, including authority to impose tariffs on foreign goods, to impose taxes on postage and to regulate interstate and international commerce. The plan added that national laws would “be the supreme law” and binding on the states, subtly a much more passive form of national authority that invited the national courts, rather than Congress, to set limits on state policy discretion. Congress would continue as a unicameral body with equal representation for each state (June 15).

As soon as Madison’s six-state coalition held together to win proportional representation in the House of Representatives, Oliver Ellsworth moved to establish equal state representation in the Senate (June 29–30). The Convention deadlocked, and Sherman convinced the delegates that political expediency required a committee to iron out the differences. The committee proposed the bicameral compromise, later known as the “Connecticut compromise,” on July 5 (June 30, July 2, July 5).

The apportionment of the House of Representatives now played a major role in tipping the Convention’s balance against Madison. The committee that reported the bicameral compromise allocated one representative in the lower house for each 40,000 inhabitants, counting three-fifths of slaves.

Sherman moved to refer the discussion of apportionment to another committee of eleven members, one from each state present. On July 10 this committee on House apportionment, on which Sherman served, proposed a 65-seat House (that is, a multiple of thirteen). Compared to the previous plan, smaller states gained seats relative to larger ones. This allocation was approved and written into the final Constitution.