The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (136 page)

One of the exceptions was Benjamin Franklin, eighty-one years of age and in bad health. He along with seven others represented Pennsylvania. At first glance, Robert Morris appeared the most formidable of the lot because of his extraordinary abilities.
But Morris sat silent in

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the deliberations of the Convention, and there is no evidence that he threw his weight around in the inns and taverns that served as backrooms. Washington stayed with Morris and his wife during the meeting, and the two must have discussed what went on from day to day. But Morris did not contribute much to the work that produced the Constitution.
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Morris's colleague James Wilson did. Only Madison, with whom Wilson collaborated, proved more important in the Convention. Wilson was a legal scholar of great learning. He was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1742, the son of a small farmer. His family had intended that he go into the ministry and sent him to St. Andrews University for preparation. Wilson had other plans and came to America in 1765. After service as a tutor in the College of Philadelphia, he read law under John Dickinson and began practice in Reading two years later. His splendid pamphlet,
Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the Parliament
, published in 1774, marked him as a thinker of imaginative power who would give good service to the American side in the struggle with Britain. Wilson served in Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence; some thought he signed rather reluctantly. But he was not a reluctant patriot and not a reluctant supporter of the rights of the ordinary people, despite his taste for good living and his apparent need for a high income.
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In the Convention, Wilson expounded a democratic nationalism. His convictions arose in part from his optimistic temperament, but perhaps more from a genuine and deep belief in the premises of the Scottish Enlightenment. This version of enlightened thought, sometimes called the commonsense philosophy, held that commonsense provided a dependable means to knowledge. Man's intuition was reliable -- David Hume to the contrary notwithstanding -- and since it was not confined to elites of blood or wealth but fairly distributed among the people whose nature was good and benevolent, they must be trusted with power. Morality indeed required that they take part in the government of themselves.

Wilson was not a selfless enthusiast -- he valued order and the things of this world. He remained a close friend of John Dickinson, who had refused to sign the Declaration, and of Robert Morris, who had hired his legal services. But Wilson came to the Convention as no one's lackey and with well-conceived political ideas.

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There were others in the Pennsylvania delegation with considerable reputations, Thomas Mifflin who never opened his mouth in the Convention and Gouverneur Morris who never closed his. Morris, by far the more important of the two, had assisted the superintendent of finance three years before. In the Convention he was usually found on the side of Madison and Wilson.
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Nearby New York sent Alexander Hamilton, John Lansing, Jr., and Robert Yates. The last two left the meeting in the middle of July and refused to return. Hamilton might have played an important part but did not, although he made a brilliant speech in favor of constitutional monarchy.

John Dickinson represented Delaware, and William Paterson, an unknown quantity soon to make himself well known, led the delegation from New Jersey. Elbridge Gerry, Rufus King, and Nathaniel Gorham, able men all, were present for Massachusetts. The most impressive delegates from the southern states were Virginians, but South Carolina's John Rutledge, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Charles Pinckney, and Pierce Butler were all men of ability. Maryland's delegation contained one man with an overdeveloped capacity for boring others, Luther Martin, a verbose dogmatist.

Until mid-July when the so-called "great compromise" was agreed upon, the delegates usually fell into two groups, representing two sorts of state interests. These alignments took place almost naturally and without effort and certainly without design. The divisions seemed inevitable because they rose from fairly long-standing political and economic circumstances, at least one of which was sanctified by the Revolution itself: state equality in Congress, which had existed since that body first took shape. In fact the practice of according each state one vote whatever its population had been followed in all revolutionary gatherings. The small states -- Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and even New York -- were understandably reluctant to give up this customary arrangement. Custom served their interest. The large states, three of which -- Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts -- had almost half the American people, naturally wished to see representatives apportioned by population. These commitments -- one to old practice, the other to changing it -- furnished the most divisive issue at the Convention.
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Political interests did not live apart from other sorts, and almost inevitably various economic interests found a common political alignment possible. Roughly speaking, businessmen in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts including overseas traders and manufacturers shared the desire of Virginian and Carolinian planters that representation be according to population. These states, especially Virginia and Pennsylvania, had a good deal of undeveloped land to develop, land which once put into use would add to their political strength in a Congress representative of population. A similar concern moved South Carolina and Georgia, both with unsettled backcountry which they hoped to fill up. These southern states had another sort of concern -- slavery, an institution they expected to have to defend in the future.

The small states also contained many men interested in western lands. For example, in New Jersey speculators held title to lands in the West based on Indian deeds. After the Virginia cession of the Northwest these men, usually organized in companies, sought to defend their interests. Control of the national government, or a strong voice in it, would surely come easier if representation remained equal among the states. Land speculators were also influential in Connecticut which had long claimed the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania for itself. A special federal writ had turned this grab aside, but the state's government, undaunted, managed to extract the Connecticut Reserve, a very large area, to feed to insatiable speculators.
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Virtually all of the small states wanted western lands. Western lands under national control might be sold to pay off public debts. To ensure this happy event, equality in Congress seemed necessary. A strong national government under the control of large states aroused fears that it might cut off small states from western revenues, and their veterans from a landed stake. And what, lacking state equality, was to prevent the large from growing larger at the expense of the small by drawing off their farmers with promises of low taxes in the West?

Large and small states shared reasons for supporting the creation of a powerful central government. Both wanted commerce regulated; both feared upheavals like Shays's Rebellion, which a national government might forestall or speedily suppress; both had a stake in solid public finance and the protection of creditors; both saw that a national government might stimulate the economy; and both saw the need for

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protection of the republic in a rapacious world of monarchy. And both were composed of citizens who had fought together in the glorious cause.

To describe the states as if they were human beings with minds and hearts is necessary, even helpful, up to a point, but sometimes probably distorts the truth. It suggests the absence of disagreement in Maryland or New Jersey to say that each had such designs on western lands. Land companies in each had such designs, and because of their power succeeded in making their desires into something approaching state policy. But there were also men in each who did not care or who despised the land companies. There is still another danger in referring to the states as if they were people: no state sat in the Convention; delegates did. Saying that in the Convention Virginia defended landed interests is a convenient shorthand and in most respects is not distorting. But the delegates in Philadelphia made hundreds of decisions while they both represented complicated interests at home and spoke for themselves. The relation between what was commonly felt to be a state interest and a delegate's decision on some matter of government, say whether the President should serve for four or six years or whether Congress or electors should choose him, is seldom clear. In most decisions about the frame of government and its powers all we can perceive are the dispositions of delegates and how their dispositions expressed the interests of dominant social and economic groups in their states. We should not assume, however, that a delegate's vote was predetermined; and we should not discount the power of the deliberations to change men's minds. The Convention met for almost four months. During that time it generated its own forces, chiefly through discussion and argument. In all these deliberations, reason and intellect made their impress, just as did irrationality and passion, chance and accident.

In the first four days after the Convention opened, it elected George Washington as its chairman, and William Jackson, who had served as an assistant to the secretary at war, its secretary. It also adopted rules which had ' been prepared by a committee of George Wythe, Alexander Hamilton, and Charles Pinckney. At this time, the Convention decided to keep its proceedings a secret, a wise decision making candor and flexibility possible, both essential to the accommodation of differences. Some promise of differences appeared in the credentials of the delegations which the Convention read in the opening sessions. Delaware's, for example, instructed its delegates not to agree to any system depriving the states of the customary equality of suffrage in the Congress.
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On May 29, Edmund Randolph turned the Convention to its work by offering the Virginia Plan. Randolph sang his song-music and lyrics by James Madison -- in a tempo appropriate to a dirge. The present situation of America, the Convention was given to understand, was not good. In fact, Randolph said, there existed such a crisis as to promise the fulfillment of the prophecies of an American downfall. To prevent a downfall and to forestall anarchy -- his speech suggested that the two were indistinguishable -- a change in government was necessary, a conclusion that could hardly have surprised that assemblage.