On March 25, 1787 deliberations begin, held behind closed doors, and led by the

most famous American of the time, George Washington, who agonized over joining the

Continental Congress because he worried how it would look on his honor if it should

fail.1 When I think of this moment of inner turmoil and how important personal honor

was to these men, the Framers, I wonder if I would have stood with the three abstaining

Framers or signed the Constitution, an instrument for governance that left great inequities

in place? It is easy to think that they were products of their time and made the best

decisions possible but that overlooks the actions of black people and white women to

attain equality and it overlooks the voting rights granted them in New Jersey until the

beginning of the 19th century. Yet, the document also laid the foundation for the “Four

Freedoms” and created a nation that in one of its greatest moments supplied the “arsenal

of democracy” to prevent a wave of militant tyrants and bigots that threatened the

Enlightenment’s natural rights of man.2 I would have agitated for a more perfect union as

many of the Framers were doing as they tried “to create an American society”

concurrently with a national government, but I still would have signed the Constitution.3

The white men gathered were affluent and educated and were looking to create

something the world had never seen: a functioning democracy. The weakness of the

Articles of Confederation and Shay’s Rebellion led all the delegates and colonies to agree

that they needed something better, except for petulant Rhode Island (a site where in 50

years a battle for wider male suffrage would led to another rebellion: Dorr’s).4 The failure

of the Articles as an instrument of government was apparent almost immediately; the

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World War II Museum
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Wiebe, 36
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Rakove, 156 and Zinn, 214
states were not paying taxes, they were ignoring the decrees of Congress, and abusing the

citizen’s of other states (Rhode Island). The Framers were all classically educated and

would have spent time ruminating over the failures of Greece and Rome (unchecked

democracies led to mob rule and that unchecked monarchies led to tyranny).5 The

difference, they hoped, was that this was the first time popularly elected people had

assembled to debate the ideas of good governance and work toward a system with the

rule of law, limited government, and individual rights for citizens. There was nothing else

like what they contemplated to look to as an example. No Democracies. The resulting

constitution is the work of all the people present in Philadelphia but bears a large imprint

from James Madison and lesser known men like James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris

who as the “Penman of the Constitution” contributed to the preamble reading “We the

people of the United States,” instead of the individual states.6 These later two men were

staunch supporters of popular sovereignty with Wilson being the only candidate to fully

support popular and direct democracy.

Small and large states, Federalists and Anti-federalists, industrial and agricultural

interests, slave owners and abolitionists were all represented in the negotiations. The

separation of powers was desired by the framers to disburse power to protect liberty. This

led to discussion over how the legislature would be shaped and citizens and states would

be represented. The first plan presented was James Madison and Edmund Randolph’s

Virginia Plan, which wanted to fix representation by population, it was countered by

William Paterson’s New Jersey Plan, calling for a set number of representatives per

state.7 The solution was the Connecticut Compromise where population apportioned
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Kuklick 77
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Kuklick 78
number of members in the House of Representatives and the Senate was a fixed number

of representatives with each state equally represented. Representatives would be

popularly elected but to maintain the power of the states the senate would be appointed

by the state legislatures, until the 17th amendment in the early 20th century. Senators were

given special powers of advice, consent, and impeachment to the executive branch and

the framers saw them as needing a special position outside of the influence of the people,

who couldn’t be trusted to avoid impulsive actions. Judge Scalia thought that the 17th

amendment was the worst violation of the original intent of the constitution that he had

seen.

The negotiations for the executive branch started with a general agreement that

there should be no king and no unlimited power but tempered with the growing fear of

increased civil disobedience and the memory of Shay’s Rebellion when the Articles of

Confederation did not give Congress the power to adequately quell resistance in a timely

manner. Hamilton showed a propensity for the monarchy as he advocated for a strong

executive elected for life, James Madison preferred to avoid direct election, and James

Wilson as I previously mentioned wanted direct participation by the general populace. 8

The final compromise is the hideously maligned and very confusing Electoral College

system, and an executive who would serve 4 years with the possibility of reelection,

despite the common adage that serving longer than one year would lead to tyranny.

Another large part of the months-long negotiations revolved around the issue of

slavery and the southern states. 25 of the framers owned slaves, yet men like Benjamin

Franklin spoke against it. Here was a man who had owned slaves but had recently

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emancipated them and was the president of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.9

George Washington and others who currently owned slaves still found the institution

immoral and a stark contradiction to the promises in the Declaration of Independence.

Nowhere in the final document do we find the word “slave.” But they are counted in the

census at the famous “3/5ths” and in Charles Pinckney’s introduction of a fugitive slave

law in Article 4, Section 2. Luther Martin tried to ban the import of slaves and the

compromise is found in Article 1, Section 9 where they delay all debate and action for

twenty years. Enslaved people where 1/5th of the overall U.S. population at the time so in

many ways the compromises of the Constitution enshrine it as perpetuating human

bondage in exchange for financial and military security of the elite majority. The

document also fails to mention women and on the rare occasions it mentions “Indians” it

is usually in relation to making war upon them.

The convention had a growing group of discontents in the Anti-federalists. They

were worried over phrases like “Necessary and Proper” and “All needful Rules and

Regulations” that they worried would grant inordinate power to the national government

at the expense of the states. The eventual addition of the first ten amendments, the “Bill

of Rights,” was to appease them and get their states to ratify the existing document.

Madison had argued that a bill of rights was unnecessary and potentially dangerous

because it could limit people’s natural rights, something directly covered in the, as yet,

untested 9th Amendment. By the inclusion of the Bill of Rights the Constitution acts as an

outline of a representative government with a separation of powers and safeguards for the

individual rights of its citizens, it is something so far beyond anything that existed at the

time that it influenced the Age of Revolutions and became a template for other nations as
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they formed. In the end, thirteen delegates walked out of the Philadelphia Convention,

three abstained from signing the final document, and thirty-nine signed the paper that is

the United States Constitution.