For this very reason, the committee had been dubious about composing a preamble.  Preambles, Randolph stated, are for the purpose of designating of government, to be expressed perhaps in the first formation of state governments.  Neither did he consider it proper to pledge in a preamble the mutual faith of the parties.  The object of this particular preamble ought to “briefly to declare that the present foederal government is insufficient to the general happiness, that the conviction of this fact gave birth to this convention . . . “

It is always a surprise to find men proceeding with extreme simplicity toward a complex and important end.  The committee, for all its experience, worked hard and humbly to define a constitutional preamble.  Preambles, after all, had been invented centuries earlier.  The English Commons had used them to publish their views to the people.  Heralds read these preambles on street corners – and Queen Elizabeth had not liked it at all.  Tudor monarchs saw no need for justifying new laws to the people.  Laws represented the Crown’s initiative and the Crown’s authority; they were to be obeyed, not explained.

The Committee of Detail had divided their material into articles and sections, and had it neatly printed, and on August 6th, John Rutledge handed out copies in the State House.  Attendance was small, for most delegates had not yet returned from their ten-day vacation.  But what they now held in their hands was a clear design for a government, bold, national, and directed at the people as individuals rather than at the states.

The new document contained much that was surprising, even shocking, though it included nothing that had not already been discussed at length.  But to see it all laid out so plain, set down by article and section, reawakened the old fears and made many of the men more cautious.  By the rules of the Convention, any one of these clauses could be reargued, even voted on again.  Five weeks of intensive debate would ensue before delegates could agree and give the document to yet another committee for final polishing

Newspapers carried notices of the adjournment, and there was a flurry of letter writing by delegates and interested bystanders.  A member from North Carolina apologized to the governor of his state for not being able to give out more information.  Secrecy was very necessary, he said.  “Many crude matters,” daily uttered on the floor, “might make an undue impression on the too credulous and unthinking mobility.”  James Madison’s father, irked at receiving no news, wrote to suggest that his son might at least give some information as to what the Convention was not doing.  Young James Monroe sent Jefferson a vague report and said he feared the country’s ruin should the Convention’s recommendations be rejected.  He trusted, however, that General Washington’s presence would “overawe and keep under the demon of party,” and that the General’s signature to the new Constitution “would secure its passage through the union.”

The General himself had got on his horse and rode upcountry with friends, trout fishing.  He was still living on Market Street with the Robert Morris family, who described their visitor as extraordinarily quiet and self-effacing.  It was Washington’s habit, returning from the Convention, to slip into the house unannounced.  No one knew he was home until they found him working over his papers or sitting quietly, meditating.

Washington’s reputation has shifted much from generation to generation.  During his lifetime he suffered sharp criticism, both as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, and even more so as President of the United States.  With the years, the virulence of party feeling faded and the Washington legend began to grow, blooming and withering again according to the fashion of the day.  Washington has been labeled as an American saint, a snobbish prude, a general who lost battles, a brilliant commander, a slow-witted country gentleman, a shadowy figure of Early America, apparently made of stone, with badly fitted false teeth.  But among all the differing contemporary descriptions, one quality everyone seemed to agree on: “There is a remarkable air of dignity about him, with a striking degree of gracefulness,” wrote an Englishman in 1780; “I have never seen anyone who was more naturally and spontaneously polite.”

There is an anecdote, in different versions, concerning Gouverneur Morris and the General, that summer of 1787.  Perhaps the story is mere legend, as are so many stories concerning Washington, but legends often are illustrative of the truth.  Morris announced in company that he was afraid of no man on earth, whereupon Alexander Hamilton made a bet that Morris would not dare to greet General Washington by a slap on the back.  Brash, cheerful, self-assured, Morris entered a drawing room a few evenings later and found Washington standing by the fireplace.  “Well, General!” said Morris, laying a hand on Washington’s shoulder.  The General said nothing.  But at once Morris knew his mistake and was ready, he said afterward, to sink through the floor.

In a Convention of quarrelsome, fiery states it was well to have such a presiding officer, personally remote, in whom the quality of personal jealousy had been conquered and put down.  “I do not think vanity is a trait of my character,” Washington wrote quite simply.  One feels this influence in the Convention; one sees the General presiding, his face grave, attentive, and one feels his anxiety, his deep involvement.  “It is not sufficient,” he had written, “for a man to be a passive friend and well wisher to the cause.”

No fewer than sixty ballots were needed before the method of selecting the President was decided, with the convention torn between appointment by Congress, by the state legislatures, or perhaps even by popular vote.  Madison remained steadfastly opposed to any proposal for popular election; one of his arguments was that people would always prefer a citizen of their own state, thereby putting the small states once again at a disadvantage.

It took nearly as many ballots to resolve other matters concerning the executive department.  Should the President be subject to impeachment?  If so, he could certainly not be called a monarch, for a king cannot be impeached.  Gouverneur Morris, at least, thought the President should be impeachable.  He reminded the delegates that even the King of England, Charles II, had been bribed by Louis XIV, and that the American executive, too, “may be bribed by a greater power to betray his trust.”

In the third month of the Convention, the matter of a king for America came to a head.  A newspaper reported a rumor, persistent and disturbing, to invite the “Bishop of Osnaburgh,” second son of George III, to America as king.  The rumor spread from town to town, state to state, and was eventually traced to a Connecticut Loyalist who had issued a circular letter suggesting that, as the states did not possess enough wit to govern themselves, George III’s son should be sent for.

The Convention was quick to act.  The Pennsylvania Journal carried an article which declared that the delegates had responded to the “idly circulating reports . . . tho’ we cannot affirmatively tell you what we are doing, we can, negatively, tell you what we are not doing – we never once thought of a king.”  Perhaps not, but monarchial traditions die hard, even in America.  When the question of the chief executive’s title came up in the Senate two years later, John Adams, no monarchist by any stretch of the imagination, nevertheless proposed “His Highness, the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties.”  Nothing less would be proportional to the authority and dignity of his office and to the wealth, power and population of the nation.  Providentially, the House refused; George Washington and his successors all remained plain “Mr. President.”

Actually, the delegates were anything but unanimous on most subjects.  Only three days earlier, the Convention had finally passed that essential measure which came to be known as the Great Compromise, by which every state was to have two members in the United States Senate.  This would offset proportional representation in the House, where the large states had the advantage, with one representative to every 40,000 inhabitants.  Critics later declared that the Convention had erred, that the Senate, like the House of Representatives, should have been proportional.  Yet without this Great Compromise it is hard to see how the Convention could have proceeded further – it was the one issue that had caused problems from the very beginning, and the efforts to resolve it had “nearly terminated in a dissolution of the Convention.”

Perhaps the delegates would never have reached an agreement had not the heat broken.  By mid-July, Philadelphia had finally cooled after a solid month of torment.  Over the weekend, members were able to rest and enjoy themselves, sleep comfortably in their narrow chambers at the lodging houses along Market Street or Second Street.  Even the mosquitoes had somewhat relented, though around noontime on the streets the horseflies still droned and darted.

The small states were jubilant over the Compromise, and if the large states had been initially alarmed, they soon let the question die.  They also recognized that perhaps it might not have been so bad a deal at all; thereafter matters moved far more easily.  The little states were more willing to meet the big, willing to yield on many questions.  They felt safer now, no longer threatened by those towering bullies – Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, or any possible combination of those three.  Soon delegates wrote home optimistically that the Convention had “nearly agreed on the principles and outlines of a system.”  Some even expressed the hope that they would shortly be able to come home, their duties and obligations fulfilled.

Arguments ran back and forth, with Madison stating flatly that it was hard enough in Virginia to persuade the best citizens to serve in the legislature; without any sort of compensation it would be all but impossible.  Were the states to rely simply on the patriotism of the people?  “If this be the only inducement,” said Madison, “you will find a great indifference in filling your legislative body.”

In the end the delegates voted unanimously not only that Senators should be paid, but also that they be chosen by their state legislatures and be not less than thirty years old.  A motion for a two-year term for Representatives was approved, but a proposal for a 9-year senatorial term was rejected, and was reduced to six years instead.  Madison had been a forceful supporter of senatorial election by the state legislatures, a provision that would remain in the constitution for 125 years.  His thinking was typical for the times.  “In framing a system which we wish to last for the ages,” he told the Convention, “we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce.  An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.  These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence.”  Power could then slide into the hands of the numerous poor rather than the few rich.  Symptoms of the dangers of this leveling spirit had already appeared in certain quarters.  To Mr. Madison’s mind, only a Senate “sufficiently respectable for its wisdom and virtue,” with an elective term of nine years to render it stable, would provide a safeguard for liberty.

It may seem odd today to find the very man who is now known and revered as the Father of the Constitution, urging, in effect, that America’s rich put up barriers against America’s poor, in whose hands power could be dangerous.  But it is difficult – and unfair – to make judgments on the delegates’ actions in terms of today.  By the “symptoms of a leveling spirit” Madison obviously meant the riots and rowdyism in Pennsylvania, the recent unrests in Maryland, the agrarian troubles of Rhode Island, and most certainly Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts.  In 1787, the Convention’s proposals were all essentially new and untried, and not one of the delegates willing to predict the results of what they were about to enact.

Franklin’s motion was defeated, not because the delegates had no faith in the power of prayer, but simply because there was no money to pay a chaplain.  The states which had elected them provided neither salary nor expense account to most of the delegates.  It is hard to remember how slim state budgets were in 1787, and so were the shifting fortunes of the men who led the states.  Washington was to leave property worth $350,000.  Elbridge Gerry held public securities in the amount of $50,000; Robert Morris’ land speculations involved millions.  But in 1787 Morris was already on the road to bankruptcy; only two years later Washington would have to borrow money to go to New York and assume the Presidency.  George Mason, for all his great plantations, came to the Convention by virtue of sixty pounds lent him by Edmund Randolph.  When his wife’s illness forced George Wythe to leave the Convention and return to Virginia, he left fifty pounds of treasury funds with the delegates, “to be distributed to such of his colleagues as should require it.” And require it many did; delegations from distant states soon ran into debt to their landladies, and the North Carolina deputies sent an urgent plea for more funds to their governor, because their state’s money was “subject to considerable Decrement when reduced to current Coin.” Young Charles Pinckney, with an income of $5,000, was perhaps the most secure financially of his Convention colleagues.  The grandest of them, at any rate, boasted more land than cash money.

At this point John Lansing of New York rose with a long and heated protest against things in general, concluding that this new government was “utterly unattainable, too novel and complex.”  George Mason of Virginia, too, spoke out against the extensive powers being granted to Congress.  “Is it to be thought that the people of America, so watchful over their interests, so jealous of their liberties, will give up their all, will surrender both the sword and the purse to the same body, and that, too, not chosen immediately by themselves?”  How were the proposed national taxes to be gathered in?  “Will the militia march from one state to another in order to collect the arrears of taxes from the delinquent members of the Republic?”  Fire and water were not more incompatible than this mixture of civil liberty and military execution.  “Will not the citizens of the invaded state assist one another till they rise as one man and shake off the Union altogether?”  George Mason confessed he was struck with horror at this prospect.

It was now that Luther Martin of Maryland stood up with the first of his intolerably long-winded speeches, which were to become a regular feature of the Convention until his angry – and merciful – departure in September, only thirteen days before the Constitution was signed.  Martin was about forty years old, a careless dresser, with a rough voice and a convivial liking for the bottle which later was to lead him into insolvency and disgrace.  He was impulsive, undisciplined, altogether the wild man of the Convention, a furious defender of state sovereignty.  Delegates were often irked at his verbosity, which invariably chose to erupt on the hottest of Philadelphia days, when the Convention was in the most discomfort.  What Mr. Martin had to say was that he saw no need for a Congress with two branches . . . To grant unnecessary powers to the general government might well defeat “the original end of the Union” . . . Congress was meant to represent the state legislatures in the Confederation, not the people . . . Also, he was against state conventions for the ratification of the Constitution.  “This was the substance of a very long speech,” wrote James Madison in his journal – and then crossed out the sentence.

Had the small states stopped to think where they would be if their stubborn support of Mr. Paterson’s Plan prevented the adoption of any plan?  New Jersey delegates had declared it would not be “safe” to allow Virginia 16 times as many votes as Delaware; it was these same gentlemen who preferred to throw all the states into one mass and divide it into equal parts.  The histories of confederations were filled with such traps and hazards, Mr. Madison warned; let not the gentlemen become entangled in webs of their own making.

As soon as Madison had finished, Rufus King of Massachusetts moved the question, and the states voted to support the Virginia Plan by a vote of 7-3.  The New Jersey Plan was dead.  Had it been introduced earlier, it might have stood a chance, but the delegates had already spent three weeks in talking, arguing, thinking it over, becoming used to what had at first seemed shocking, even impossible.  Thereafter the Convention would proceed according to Virginia’s 19 Resolves, though much would eventually be altered.  The United States Constitution as signed in the end was to be very different from Mr. Randolph’s Plan, and far more flexible as well.

But when the delegates rejected the New Jersey Plan, it did not mean that the small states had capitulated.  The battle for Congressional representation would rage for another month, until the Convention adopted a compromise, giving equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House of Representation. Until then the drama in the State House would heighten day by day, with increasing tension and thickening atmosphere until it seemed there would never be a solution, no new Constitution for these thirteen harassed, quarreling American states.

Yet Hamilton must have anticipated the effect of his speech.  He was far too experienced to let emotions carry him into rash or uncalculated statements. Had the Convention been public rather than secret, it seems unlikely that he would have gone that far.  Perhaps he deliberately outlined a system of government so outlandish that it would make the Virginia Plan look tame by comparison, and the New Jersey Plan simply unacceptable.  And, in fact, whether Hamilton had spoken with calculated intent or not, the very specter of his powerful unitary state looming on one hand, and with the New Jersey Plan advocates making noises at the other, it did make some scaled-down version of the Virginia Plan all the more attractive.

But Alexander Hamilton was to pay a price for his speech of June 18; for the rest of his life it would rise to harass him, and his enemies made much of it at every opportunity.  They said the Constitution had “an awful squinting toward monarchy,” and that Hamilton always wanted an American king.  Hamilton denied it, and later even denied that he had advocated a President with life tenure, but this denial, James Madison wrote, was due “to a want of recollection.”

Perhaps no man in American history has been so variously characterized – anything from a foreign adventurer to a patriotic genius, and every shade in between.  Brilliant, daring, politically ruthless, he had a vision of the United States as a single, unified nation, powerful enough on land and on sea to rival Britain and France.

Actually, it was surprising that Hamilton had gotten to the Convention at all.  The New York legislature never would have named him had it not been for the political prestige of his father-in-law, Philip Schuyler, of the great patroon family.  New York State was divided sharply into two political parties.  George Clinton, now serving his sixth term as governor, was on the rural agrarian side, also very powerful among the mechanics and artisans of the towns.  Clinton had beaten Schuyler for governor in ’77, but Schuyler had a faction of his own, backed by the wealthy old landowning families – the Van Rensselaers, Morrises, Van Cortlandts, Livingstons, and Bayards – together with the urban financial interests of the state – the bankers, lawyers and merchants.  Supporters of a strong national government, these men had seen to it that at least one nationalist went to Philadelphia.

There were so many controversial facts and issues surrounding the man that Hamilton stood little chance this day.  He was to speak for nearly six hours – the entire day, in fact – but whatever he said was bound to be met with doubt, uneasy praise.  In the minds of the Convention members a Virginia Plan had been debated, a New Jersey Plan had been introduced and awaited the vote.  What then had this impeccably dressed son-in-law of Philip Schuyler to offer?

The convention also knew that Hamilton was a nationalist, that he desired a strong central government.  Many of the members had already sat in Congress with him and were well familiar with his views.  But what Hamilton proposed that day outdid in audacity any previous statements he had made.  He would read to the Committee, he said, a sketch of a plan which he preferred to the two plans under consideration.  He “almost despaired” that a republican government could be established over so great an extent of country.  Yet what he suggested was republican in form.  His plan was offered not as a proposition to the Committee, but merely as a correct view of his own ideas – amendments that might be later offered to Mr. Randolph’s Plan.

He would like to see in America, said Hamilton, a single executive, chosen for life by electors and given the power of absolute veto.  Senators also were to be chosen for life.  A lower house or assembly would be elected by the people for a term of three years.  State governors were to be appointed by the national government.  Thus the senate and the executive – Hamilton called him the Governor – would balance against a democratic assembly.  Such a government would derive from the people, but the rage for liberty would be checked.  “Men love power; give all power to the many, they will oppress the few.  Give all power to the few, they will oppress the many.”

Without hesitation, Hamilton pointed to Great Britain, whose House of Lords he called a most noble institution.  “I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced . . . This government has for its object public strength and individual security – said with us to be unattainable.  All communities divide themselves into the few and the many.  The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people.  The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God . . . it is not true in fact . . . ”

Popular passions, Hamilton went on, “spread like wildfire and become irresistible.”  The New England states could certainly testify to that fact.  And why should we fear an elective monarch for life more than one for seven years?  Were not the governors of the states elective monarchs?  But Hamilton went even further.  “The monarch must have proportional strength.  He ought to be hereditary and to have so much power that it will not be in his interest to risk much to acquire more.  The advantage of a monarch is this – he is above corruption.”

Twelve judges, serving during good behavior, were to act as the supreme federal judiciary.  They would have original jurisdiction in all cases involving captures, and appellate authority from state courts in cases concerning foreign citizens and general revenue.  Congress could establish state tribunals to deal with matters concerning the federal government.

Impeachment of the Governor, Senators and other federal officials would be made possible.  Trial of such a defendant would be held in a court comprising the supreme court justices and the chief judge of each state supreme court.  If convicted, the official would be removed from office and further disqualified.

Finally, all state laws contrary to the Constitution were void.  The various state governors would be the determining factor.  In addition, no state was to have land or naval forces of its own, and state militias were to be under the jurisdiction and control of the United States government.

That Hamilton was not interrupted seems extraordinary, considering his remarks, their boldness, the growing unpopularity of this British example.  A single executive, elected for life?  It came close to monarchy.  It was enough to make James Madison’s hair turn gray.  Hamilton was going to antagonize every small-state man in the Convention.  The day was fearfully hot.  Hamilton could not have finished speaking much before three in the afternoon, and even the presiding officer, Nathaniel Gorman, confessed that he was nearly overcome with the heat.  At long last, Hamilton finished with the statement that he knew very well that his proposal and the Virginia Plan were both “very remote from the idea of the people.  But the people are gradually ripening in their opinions of government.  They begin to be tired of an excess of democracy . . . “

“Then adjourned to tomorrow,” Judge Yates, fellow-delegate from New York, scribbled hastily in his notes.