About half of the men had attended or graduated from college. Some men held medical degrees or advanced training in theology. Most delegates were educated in the colonies, but several were lawyers who had been trained at the Inns of Court in London.
Several notable Founders did not participate in the Constitutional Convention. Thomas Jefferson was abroad, serving as the minister to France. John Adams was in Britain, serving as minister to that country, but he wrote home to encourage the delegates. Most were successful in subsequent careers, although seven suffered serious financial reverses that left them in or near bankruptcy. Most of the group continued to render public service, particularly to the new government they had helped to create.
At the Constitutional Convention, several plans were introduced. While waiting for the Convention to formally begin, James Madison sketched out his initial draft, which became known as the Virginia Plan. It also reflected his views as a strong nationalist. The Virginia Plan proposed a legislative branch consisting of two chambers. Rotation in office and recall were two principles applied to the lower house of the national legislature.
It was a confederation, or treaty, among the thirteen states. There was to be a bicameral legislature made up of a Senate and a House of Delegates. The House would have one member for every one thousand inhabitants.
The House would elect Senators who would serve by rotation for four years and represent one of four regions. Congress would meet in a joint session to elect a President, and it would also appoint members of the cabinet.
Congress, in joint session, would serve as the court of appeal of last resort in disputes between states. Pinckney did also provide for a supreme Federal Judicial Court. The Pinckney plan was not debated, but it may have been referred to by the Committee of Detail for early draft.
Congress would meet in a joint session to elect a President, and would also appoint members of the cabinet. Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had equal representation in Congress—one vote per state. This position reflected the belief that the states were independent entities that could enter and leave the United States on their own volition. It also was known as the British Plan, because of its resemblance to the British system of strong centralized government.
The plan featured a bicameral legislature, the lower house elected by the people for three years. The upper house would be elected by electors chosen by the people and would serve for life. The plan also gave the Governor, an executive elected by electors for a life-term of service, an absolute veto over bills.
State governors would be appointed by the national legislature, and the national legislature had veto power over any state legislation. Hamilton presented his plan to the Convention on June 18, The plan was perceived as a well-thought-out plan, but it was not considered because it resembled the British system too closely. To resolve this stalemate, Roger Sherman, a delegate from Connecticut, forged the Connecticut Compromise. In a sense it blended the Virginia large-state and New Jersey small-state proposals.
Ultimately, its main contribution was determining the method for apportionment of the Senate and retaining a federal character in the constitution. What was ultimately included in the Constitution was a modified form of this plan. In the Committee of Detail, Benjamin Franklin added the requirement that revenue bills originate in the House.
As such, the Senate would bring a federal character to the government, not because senators were elected by state legislatures, but because each state was equally represented. The Virginia delegation took the initiative to frame the debate by immediately drawing up and presenting a proposal, for which delegate James Madison is given chief credit.
It was, however, Edmund Randolph, the Virginia governor at the time, who officially put it before the convention on May 29, in the form of 15 resolutions. The scope of the resolutions, going well beyond tinkering with the Articles of Confederation, succeeded in broadening the debate to encompass fundamental revisions to the structure and powers of the national government. The resolutions proposed, for example, a new form of national government having three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.
One contentious issue facing the convention was the manner in which large and small states would be represented in the legislature.
The contention was whether there would be equal representation for each state regardless of its size and population, or proportionate to population giving larger states more votes than less-populous states. The Virginia Plan proposed a bicameral legislature, a legislative branch with two chambers.
This legislature would contain the dual principles of rotation in office and recall, applied to the lower house of the national legislature. Large states supported this plan, while smaller states generally opposed it. In addition to dealing with legislative representation, the Virginia Plan ed other issues as well, with many provisions that did not make it into the Constitution that emerged. It called for a national government of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.
The people would elect members for one of the two legislative chambers. Members of that chamber would then elect the second chamber from nominations submitted by state legislatures. The legislative branch would then choose the executive branch. The terms of office were unspecified, but the executive and members of the popularly elected legislative chamber could not be elected for an undetermined time afterward.
The legislative branch would have the power to negate state laws if they were deemed incompatible with the articles of union. The concept of checks and balances was embodied in a provision that a council composed of the executive and selected members of the judicial branch could veto legislative acts. An unspecified legislative majority could override their veto. Paterson was also known as the primary author of the New Jersey Plan during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The less populous states were adamantly opposed to giving most of the control of the national government to the more populous states, and so proposed an alternative plan that would have kept the one-vote-per-state representation under one legislative body from the Articles of Confederation.
This position reflected the belief that the states were independent entities, and as they entered the United States of America freely and individually, so they remained.
The plan proposed that the Articles of Confederation should be amended as follows:. Ultimately, the New Jersey Plan was rejected as a basis for a new constitution. During the Constitutional Convention, the most contentious disputes revolved around the composition of the Presidency and the Judiciary. Most of the convention was spent deciding these issues, while the powers of legislature, executive, and judiciary were not heavily disputed.
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia : During the Constitutional Convention, some the most contentious disputes revolved around the composition of the Presidency and the Judiciary. By the time the rest of the Virginia delegation arrived, most of the Pennsylvania delegation had arrived as well. The delegates agreed with Madison that the executive function had to be independent of the legislature. In their aversion to kingly power, American legislatures had created state governments where the executive was beholden to the legislature and by the late s, this was widely seen as being a source of paralysis.
The Confederation government was the ultimate example of this. Portrait of James Madison : James Madison authored the Virginia Plan, which contained important provisions on the presidency and judiciary. Madison, however, did not believe that the judiciary should be truly independent, but rather be obligated to the legislature not the executive.
By insisting on the independence of the judiciary, Madison stepped away from the Articles of Confederation to create something entirely new. At the convention, some sided with Madison that the legislature should choose judges, while others believed the president should choose judges. A compromise was eventually reached that the president should pick judges and the Senate confirm them. One of the most pressing issues during the early debate was the election of the president.
Few agreed with Madison that the executive should be elected by the legislature. There was widespread concern with direct election, because information diffused so slowly in the late eighteenth century and because of concerns that people would only vote for candidates from their state or region. A vocal minority wanted the national executive to be chosen by the governors of the states. This was one of the last major issues to be resolved and was done so in the Electoral College.
At the time, before the formation of modern political parties, there was widespread concern that candidates would routinely fail to secure a majority of electors in the Electoral College. The method of resolving this problem, therefore, was a contested issue. Most thought that the house should then choose the president, since it most closely reflected the will of the people. To resolve this dispute, the convention agreed that the house would elect the president if no candidate had an Electoral College majority, but that each state delegation would vote as a block, rather than individually.
Electoral College : The Constitutional Convention agreed that the house would elect the president if no candidate had an Electoral College majority, but that each state delegation would vote as a block, rather than individually. It also created the Office of the Vice President whose only roles were to succeed a president unable to complete a term of office and to preside over the Senate.
The committee transferred important powers from the Senate to the president who now, for example, would be given the power to make treaties and appoint ambassadors. The problem had resulted from the understanding that the president would be chosen by Congress; the decision to have the president be chosen instead by an electoral college reduced the chance of the president becoming beholden to Congress, so a shorter term with eligibility for re-election became a viable option.
The report from the Committee on Detail at the Constitutional Convention constituted the first draft of the United States Constitution.
It was convened to problems in governing the United States of America following independence from Great Britain. Before the Constitution was drafted, the nearly four million inhabitants of the thirteen newly-independent states were governed under the Articles of Confederation, created by the Second Continental Congress. However, the chronically underfunded Confederation government, as originally organized, was inadequate for managing the various conflicts that arose among the states.
Due to the difficulty of travel in the late 18 th century, very few of the selected delegates were present on the designated day of May 14, It was not until May 25 that a quorum of seven states was secured. The first area of major dispute was the manner by which the lower house would be apportioned. A minority wanted all states would have equal weight.
Most accepted the desire among the slave states to count slaves as part of the population, although their servile status was raised as a major objection against this. It was chaired by John Rutledge. This report constituted the first draft of the United States Constitution.
Much of what was contained in the final document was present in this draft. John Rutledge : The Constitutional Convention adjourned to await the report of the Committee of Detail, which was to produce a first draft of the Constitution. Many details recorded by the Committee had never been discussed during the Convention, but the Committee viewed these details as uncontroversial and unlikely to be challenged.
Examples of these details include the Speech and Debate Clause, which grants members of Congress immunity for comments made in their jobs and the rules for organizing the House of Representatives and the Senate. Another month of discussion and minor refinement followed. During this month, few attempts to alter the Rutledge draft were successful. Some delegates wanted to add property qualifications for people to hold office.
Others wanted to prevent the national government from issuing paper money. James Madison wanted to push the Constitution back in the direction of his Virginia plan. George Washington presiding over the Constitutional Convention, Smaller states have disproportionately more power in the Senate. The imbalance of proportionate power favoring smaller states in the Senate means that interests in those states, such as mining in West Virginia or hog farming in Iowa, are more likely to get attention—and money—from federal coffers.
That means, for example, even though Wyoming only has three votes in the electoral college, with the smallest population of all the states, each elector represents a far smaller group of people than each of the 55 electoral votes in the most populous state of California. The system ensures power is distributed geographically. Some scholars see the small-state bias in the Senate as critical. The arrangement means that power in the Senate is distributed geographically, if not by population, ensuring that interests across the entire country are represented.
Gary L. Gregg II, a political scientist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, argues in a article in Politico that major metropolitan areas already hold power by hosting major media, donor, academic and government centers.
The structure of the Senate and the corresponding representation in the electoral college, he says, ensures that the interests of rural and small-town America are preserved.
Was that the intention of the Founding Fathers? Edwards is doubtful since, as he points out, the majority of Americans at the time of Constitutional Congress came from rural areas—not urban. This is because equal-state representation in the Senate is specifically protected in the Constitution.
And no state is likely to willingly give up their say in the Senate. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you.
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