History of the U.S. Constitution
Four years after securing their independence from England, 55 delegates met in Philadelphia to grapple with serious problems that threatened the young confederation. The first meeting was held May 25, 1787 and every state in the new nation was represented except for Rhode Island.
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It didn’t take long for the group to conclude that the Articles of Confederation were insufficient to secure the freedom they had recently won in the Revolutionary War. Ultimately, the delegates began drafting a new form of government.
The next four months were scorching hot--from the summer weather outside and the fervent debates inside the hall. These were demanding days of difficult deliberation.
The Constitution was drafted and signed by members of the Philadelphia Convention at Independence Hall. The same building hosted the signing of the Declaration of Independence eleven years earlier.
One particularly serious point of contention was how states would be represented in the new government. The smaller states insisted they have an equal number of representatives in Congress as the larger states. The large states adamantly objected. Proclaiming the proposition preposterous. For them representation had to be based strictly on population. Both sides dug their heels in so deep that the entire effort came to a standstill several times.
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Robert Sherman introduced
"The Connecticut Compromise"
On June 30th Robert Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, delegates from Connecticut, offered a compromise. They proposed a dual system of representation for filling the seats in the two-chambered Congress. The lower house (or House of Representatives) would grant each state a number of seats based on their population, while the upper house (or the Senate) would award each state an equal number of senators.
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Debate over the plan raged and already torrid tempers rose to the point of combustion. Some delegates including Alexander Hamilton, left in protest and the great American experiment looked as though it would die before it was ever born.
Under these circumstances, even General George Washington, who presided over the convention, struggled to maintain hope for a positive resolution. He had come to the convention reluctantly and only after substantial pressure had been applied by great men such as James Madison (a delegate from Virginia) and Henry Knox (a trusted officer who served in the Revolutionary War under Washington).
On July 3rd, Washington received a letter from Alexander Hamilton who explained his frustration with the proceedings. In part Hamilton wrote:
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"My anxiety for the event of the deliberations of the Convention induces me to make this communication of what appears to be the tendency of the public mind. I own to you Sir that I am seriously and deeply distressed at the aspect of the Councils which prevailed when I left Philadelphia. I fear that we shall let slip the golden opportunity of rescuing the American empire from disunion anarchy and misery.
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...I shall of necessity remain here ten or twelve days; if I have reason to believe that my attendance at Philadelphia will not be mere waste of time, I shall after that period rejoin the Convention."
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0110
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Alexander Hamilton
Though he left the Philadelphia Convention
on June 30th, he eventually returned and became a signer and fierce promoter
of the U.S. Constitution.
General George Washington
After the Revolutionary War, Washington planned to retire to his Mount Vernon home.
Though he did not seek power, he answered the call time and again because of his love of freedom and his fellowmen.
Washington's response of July 10th acknowledged that the situation was dire but appealed for Hamilton's return.
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"The state of the Councils which prevailed at the period you left this City...are now, if possible, in a worse train than ever; you will find but little ground on which the hope of a good establishment can be formed.
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...I am sorry you went away. I wish you were back. The crisis is equally important and alarming, and no opposition under such circumstances should discourage exertions till the signature is fixed."
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http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-alexander-hamilton-3/
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Deliberations continued without Hamilton and finally on July 16th the Connecticut plan passed by just one vote. It was a miracle that would become known as the Great Compromise. Though there was still much work to be accomplished the compromise allowed the convention to survive and the work of crafting a new government to continue.
On September 17, 1787, one hundred days after they began, the delegates produced a new, 4,487 word document that occupied four 29” X 24” pages. From the flames of fervent feuding arose a fantastic phenomenon.
Though Alexander Hamilton had returned eight days earlier and signed, fourteen delegates did not, leaving forty-one to approve or deny it. Three delegates--George Mason and Edmond Randolph from Virginia and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts--though present, did not sign but each of the remaining 39 men did (see list at the end of this article).
At 81 years old, Benjamin Franklin was the oldest delegate in the hall, and was in such poor health that he required assistance to approach and sign the Constitution. It is said that he did so with tears streaming down his face.
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James Madison--the only delegate to attend every meeting, and sometimes called “the Father of the Constitution”--said, “The happy Union of these States is a wonder, their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.”
Other framers of this remarkable document echoed the sentiment.
Benjamin Franklin
was the oldest delegate--81 years old.
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John Adams called it “the greatest single effort of national deliberation the world has ever seen,” while George Washington wrote that “it appears to me, then, little short of a miracle.”
After the convention, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin as he left Independence Hall. “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” the woman queried. Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
John Jay
did not attend the Constitutional Convention, but joined Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in writing the Federalist Papers.
The task of drafting and signing was finished, but before the Constitution could become the law of the land, it had to be ratified by at least nine of the 13 states. Several framers went to work to persuade the public that this new constitution would provide them greater freedom and national security. Most notably Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote a series of eighty-five essays urging the citizens of New York to ratify the Constitution. These papers have become known as "the Federalist Papers." Others known as Anti-Federalist took to the press also and voiced concerns with the new constitution.
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On December 7th, five states (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut) were the first to ratify it.
However, the fight for ratification continued. Concerned that the new government would encroach on individual rights unless those basic rights were spelled out, some states (such as Massachusetts) refused to ratify the Constitution without a “Bill of Rights.”
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When Paul Revere learned that Samuel Adams and John Hancock were hesitant about the new Constitution, he organized a group in Boston to work behind the scenes for ratification in Massachusetts.
After securing a promise the newly formed government would take up proposed amendments immediately after ratification, Massachusetts, Maryland and South Carolina approved the Constitution in February 1788.
It took four more months before the ninth state (New Hampshire) ratified, establishing the Constitution as the binding law of the United States on June 21, 1788. The states agreed that the new government under the Constitution would begin on March 4, 1789.
The first Congress of the United States met in September of that same year, and as promised, took up the issue of amendments. Though they adopted 12 amendments, only 10 were ratified by the states in 1791. Since then more than 11,000 amendments have been introduced in Congress however, only 17 more have ever been ratified.
To this day, the U.S. Constitution remains the world’s oldest and shortest written constitution.
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Why does it matter?
The Constitution of the United States is the mechanism which safeguards against tyranny and overreach by the government. Concerning it, President George Washington warned “the preservation of your government and the permanency of your present happy state…[makes it] requisite…that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles…One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown” (Farewell Address, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp).
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Over the years the principles enshrined in the Constitution have made the United States the greatest nation on the earth as it has safeguarded more freedoms for more people than any other nation at any time in history.
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Some have argued that the Constitution protects slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth as former slave and patriot Frederick Douglass explained:
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“Let us look at the objects for which the Constitution was framed and adopted and see if slavery is one of them. Here are its own objects as set forth by itself: ‘We, the people of these United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’ . . .These are all good objects, and, slavery, so far from being among them, is a foe of them. But is has been said that negroes are not included within the benefits sought under this declaration. This is said by the slaveholders in America…but it is not said by the Constitution itself. Its language is ‘we the people’; not we the white people, not even we the citizens, not we the privileged class, not we the high, not we the low, but we the people; not we the horses, sheep, and swine, and wheel-barrows, but we the people, we the human inhabitants; and, if negroes are people, they are included in the benefits for which the Constitution of America was ordained and established…”
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“The constitutionality of slavery can be made out only by disregarding the plain and common-sense reading of the Constitution itself; by discrediting and casting away as worthless the most beneficent rules of legal interpretation; by ruling the negro outside of these beneficent rules; by claiming everything for slavery; by denying everything for freedom; by assuming that the Constitution does not mean what it says, and that it says what it does not mean, by disregarding the written Constitution, and interpreting it in the light of secret understanding. It is in this mean, contemptible, and underhand method that the American Constitution is pressed into the service of slavery. They go everywhere else for proof that the Constitution is pro-slavery but to the Constitution itself.”
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Frederick Douglas
escaped slavery at age 20. A man of great
moral character, Douglass used his talents as a charismatic speaker to defend freedom.
The Constitution of the United States paved the way for women in the United States as well. In 1873 Susan B. Anthony, leader of the women’s suffrage movement declared, “The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the constitutions of the several states and the organic laws of the territories, all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights.”
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In his farewell address on January 11, 1989, president Ronald Reagan said “Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which ‘We the people’ tell the government what it is allowed to do. ‘We the people’ are free.”
Susan B. Anthony
Best known for her leadership in the
women's suffrage movement and passage
of the 19th Amendment, Anthony was
also involved in number of other
causes of liberty.
At the end of his service as the first president of the United States, George Washington declared, “The Constitution is the guide, which I will never abandon.”
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