Members knew it had been hazardous to attempt this Convention in the first place. Now it seemed as if they were to endure the same problem as the Congress in New York City. When the first ten days went by without a quorum present, many of the delegates became anxious and wrote home urging their colleagues to set out without delay. New York’s delegation had arrived promptly, but by July 8 all three had vanished again; only Alexander Hamilton would return. Dr. McHenry of Maryland went home on June 1st because of family illness. George Wythe left three days later because of a sick wife and never came back. New Hampshire’s entire delegation did not show until the middle of July, and the last representative, John Francis Mercer of Maryland, did not arrive until August 6th. Other members came and went to the Congress at New York, absent from the Convention for days or weeks at a time, on public or private business. Others left in disapproval of the direction things were taking. Thus, in spite of the official membership of 55, no more than eleven states were ever represented at any one time, and barely more than thirty delegates at any given moment. On most mornings the room resembled a large committee gathering rather than a full convention.
No delegate confessed it in his letters home – the secrecy rule made for discretion – but there was the ever-present danger that the Convention might dissolve and the entire project be abandoned. Yet new delegates kept appearing, and with each new member the Convention was reassured. On June 1st, William Houstoun of Georgia arrived – a young lawyer with little to recommend him save a distinguished family background and striking handsome looks. No sooner were his credentials examined than the Committee of the Whole resolved to take under consideration Virgina’s Resolve 7: “that a national executive be instituted . . .”
Charles Pinckney rose at once to urge a “vigorous executive.” He did not say a President of the United States. It took the convention a long time to come around to President; always they referred to a chief executive or a national executive, whether plural or singular. James Wilson followed Pinckney by moving that the executive consist of a single person; Pinckney seconded him.
A sudden silence followed; “a considerable pause,” as Madison wrote. A single executive for the entire nation?! There was a menace in these words; some saw monarchy in them. It was true enough that nine states each had a single executive – a governor or a president – but everywhere the local legislature was supreme, looked on as the voice of the people which could control a governor any day. But a single executive for the national government conjured up visions from the past – royal governors who could not be restrained, a crown, a scepter!
As the silence lengthened, Benjamin Franklin, always alert to the atmosphere of a meeting, said he wished the gentlemen would deliver their sentiments. James Wilson of Pennsylvania rose to explain that he did favor a single executive. Energy, dispatch, and responsibility, he said, were the prime necessities for the executive branch, and such traits would best be found in a single person. But his motion was instantly opposed. Roger Sherman declared that the executive was “nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the legislature into effect . . . the person or persons ought to be appointed by and accountable to the legislature only, which was the depository of the supreme will of the society.” And Edmund Randolph “strenuously opposed the idea of a single executive.” He regarded it as the fetus of monarchy. He could not see why Mr. Wilson’s prime necessities for the executive department could not be found in three men as well as in one man. We must not look toward “the British government as our prototype . . . America requires a different form of government.” But on June 2, John Dickinson rose to declare for a single executive; he also said he considered a limited monarchy “as one of the best governments in the world,” though he was quick to add that in America it was out of the question. A House of Nobles could not be created by a stroke of the pen.
Dickinson was now 54 years old; he had been famous in America since the publication nearly twenty years earlier of his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. Everyone had read these letters; their author was obviously familiar with the principles of English liberty and the impasse which the colonies had reached with the mother country. The Letters had been written in a warm, simple style, as man to man, almost with the Franklin touch. It had been Dickinson who in July of ’75 had written the magnificent closing passages to the Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, and a year later had been chairman of the committee that had written the Articles of Confederation. In spite of voting against the Declaration of Independence, Dickinson had immediately marched to Elizabethtown with the militia. And in this Convention, John Dickinson was one of the strongest advocates for a national government.
The debate on a single or plural executive began to get heated as the members forgot their initial reluctance. Randolph again objected to a single executive; the people, he said, would never have confidence in any one man. Besides, no matter who was appointed, he would be sure to live somewhere near the center of population. “Consequently the remote parts would not be on equal footing.” An executive of three members, on the other hand, could be drawn from three different portions of the country.
Pierce Butler of South Carolina strongly objected. He had seen in Holland how a plurality of military heads distracted the little republic when threatened with invasion by the imperial troops. Besides, members of a plural executive would always be swayed by the interests of the locality from which they came.
