This chapter draws on an essay by David B. Robertson to provide an analysis of how the debates at the Philadelphia Convention shaped the final design of the Constitution. The essay focuses in particular on the overlooked but very significant role of Roger Sherman and the Connecticut delegation, who opposed James Madison’s plans on many points. This essay is “Madison’s Opponents and Constitutional Design,” American Political Science Review 99 (2005): 225-43. The introduction follows here below.

James Madison’s compelling Federalist essays [1787-88] left the mistaken impression that the Constitution’s final design closely matched his own ideas for American government, and that these ideas essentially shaped the document. But Madison’s Virginia Plan, presented at the start of the Constitutional Convention, was very different from the Constitution he later urged the states to ratify. Initially, Madison placed a high priority on giving the national government very broad powers to tax, to regulate all commerce and currency, and to veto state laws. Initially, his proposals aimed to allocate seats in the Senate as well as the House of Representatives in proportion to state population or wealth. But the Constitution signed on September 17, 1787, differs from Madison’s initial plan on all these important dimensions.

The final Constitution vested the national government with much less authority than Madison wanted and allowed the states much more authority than Madison thought safe. Even as he was preparing a spirited public defense of the Constitution in the fall of 1787, in private correspondence Madison was expressing disappointment and pessimism about the Convention’s final product. Madison’s disappointments resulted from political compromises on Constitutional design forced on him by Convention opponents whose goals, effectiveness, and impact are far too little understood and appreciated

Delegates from the economically disadvantaged states that lie between Virginia and Massachusetts composed the core of the opposition to the Virginia Plan. They mobilized against the coalition of six large and southern states that Madison expected to unite behind his initial agenda. These delegates sought to strengthen the central government selectively, nationalizing only a narrow set of public goods, while defending most of their state’s policy autonomy and its equal influence in the national policy-making process.

Connecticut’s delegation played a pivotal role in this opposition, and Roger Sherman, a skilled Connecticut politician, emerged as Madison’s most relentless antagonist. As they defended their states’ interests, the delegates from Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland substantially reshaped Madison’s initial blueprint. During the course of the meeting, they derailed Madison’s agenda, won delegates over to an innovative theory of dual national and state authority, and earned important victories for state policy autonomy and influence.

The Constitution was largely an unanticipated by-product of politically expedient compromises rather than the product of a single plan. Nothing better exemplifies this thoroughly political nature of Constitutional design than dual state and national sovereignty, a conceptual innovation pressed by Connecticut’s delegates over Madison’s objections. Federalism was designed the way it has been used ever since, as an opportunistic political battlefield with ambiguous boundaries, one that makes it possible to displace substantive policy conflicts with perpetual quarrels over the boundary between state and federal power.

Ideas vs Interests at the Philadelphia Convention

The states sent politicians to represent them in Philadelphia, not philosophers, professors, or investors. Most of the delegates had served in state legislatures, offices, or courts. Many of the most active participants, such as James Madison and Roger Sherman, had made politics a career.

By early 1787, however, Shays’s Rebellion, state currency policies, and other problems in state governance expanded political support for far-reaching national government reforms. The delegates’ central political dilemma, then, was to reconstitute the national government so it could provide the national public goods they believed necessary, without endangering the vital interests of their constituents and the polities they had built in their own states.

It is impossible to specify with precision how philosophical ideas affected these Constitutional design choices. No delegate disputed the wide support for republican ideals, for example, but Republicanism specified little beyond the ultimate sovereignty of the people and the principle of separation of powers.

By expanding the concept of interest beyond personal pecuniary gain and selfish parochialism, to include the representation of a state’s autonomy and economic interests, it is much easier to see that the delegates’ ideas and interests aligned closely with one another. The delegates frequently invoked philosophical principles in the Convention debates, but these claims almost always dovetailed with their constituents’ interests. Political calculations and negotiations, rather than philosophical arguments, settled most of the disputes among delegates.

James Madison’s Agenda for Constitutional Design

James Madison prepared for the Convention more thoroughly than any other delegate. Madison sought three kinds of far-reaching changes in national government design. First, Madison sought to transfer to the national government complete authority over taxes, commerce, and other basic tools of economic policy. Madison also believed that taxation should be nationalized (June 28) and “no line could be drawn between” authority to regulate trade and authority to levy taxes” (Aug. 13). To anchor this broad national authority, Madison proposed the extraordinary national power to veto state legislation at will (June 8; June 19; July 17).

Second, Madison’s basic plan aimed to minimize the state governments’ role in choosing national policy-makers. The Virginia Plan proposed that the voters directly choose the members of the House of Representatives. The House then would elect the Senate from slates proposed by the states, and the national legislature would choose the national executive and judiciary. Madison described this scheme as a “policy of refining the popular appointments by successive filtrations” (May 31), and it would disconnect national policy making from the states.

The third basic element of Madison’s plan was what he termed “proportional representation,” that is, apportioning seats in the national legislature according to population size. Proportional representation in both houses of Congress would further nationalize policy, by reducing the influence of state governments as units of representation, and would substantially increase the influence of Madison’s own constituents by giving Virginia the largest delegation in Congress.

Tactically, Madison depended on a swift victory for proportional representation to bind together a winning Convention coalition of six states. The three largest states, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, would gain from proportional representation in the short run. Georgia and the Carolinas were expected to gain in the foreseeable future as their rapidly growing populations eclipsed the eastern states.

At the Convention’s first working session on May 29, Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph offered Virginia’s plan in fifteen resolutions based on Madison’s ideas. The Virginia Plan made the change from state-based representation to proportional representation the first order of business.

The breadth of Madison’s plan to nationalize economic authority, then, enabled a wide range of opponents to unite around concerns about what government would do with that power. To alter Madison’s design fundamentally, Madison’s Convention opponents had to slow the progress of his agenda and draw some of his expected allies away from his coalition.