The Constitutional Convention and Debates over Ratification in two minutes
- Fifty-five delegates from twelve states, all but Rhode Island, met in Philadelphia from May 1787. Congress had called the meeting only to revise the Articles, but Madison's Virginia Plan proposed replacing them.
- The Great Compromise of July 16, 1787, settled the clash between the Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan: House seats by population and an equal vote for each state in the Senate.
- The Three-Fifths Compromise counted three-fifths of enslaved people toward House seats and direct taxes. Congress could not ban slave imports before 1808, and a fugitive clause required returning people who escaped slavery.
- Federalists, strongest among merchants and creditors in port cities, backed the Constitution. Anti-Federalists, many of them backcountry farmers, feared a distant, consolidated government and demanded a bill of rights.
- Madison argued in Federalist No. 10 that a large republic would control faction, while the Anti-Federalist writer Brutus held that a free republic had to stay small.
- Federalists won close votes by promising amendments: Massachusetts ratified 187 to 168 in February 1788, Virginia 89 to 79 in June and New York 30 to 27 in July.
- On the exam: Expect comparison of Federalists and Anti-Federalists, causation behind the compromises over representation and slavery, and sources such as Federalist No. 10 or Brutus. Links to Topics 3.7 and 3.9.
Topic 3.8 key terms
- Shays's Rebellion (Shays' Rebellion)
- Aug. 1786–Feb. 1787
An armed uprising of western Massachusetts farmers, many of them veterans, who closed courts to stop seizures for debts and taxes. Militia cannon killed four at Springfield in January 1787.
Because Congress could not pay troops to stop it, many leaders decided the Articles had failed.
- Constitutional Convention (Philadelphia Convention)
- May 25–Sept. 17, 1787
A secret meeting in Philadelphia, with George Washington presiding, where 55 delegates from every state but Rhode Island wrote a new constitution. Congress had approved the meeting only to revise the Articles.
Delegates compromised over representation, slavery, and trade until large and small states, and slave and free states, could all accept the plan.
- Virginia Plan
- Presented May 29, 1787
Madison's plan for three branches and a two-house Congress, with seats in both houses based on free population or taxes paid. Virginia's governor, Edmund Randolph, presented it to the Convention.
The plan made replacing the Articles the Convention's starting point, and its seats by population pitted large states against small ones.
- New Jersey Plan
- Presented June 15, 1787; rejected June 19
William Paterson's small-state plan to keep the Articles' one-house Congress, with one vote per state, while letting it tax imports and regulate trade.
The Convention rejected it seven states to three, but the small states kept fighting for an equal vote in Congress.
- Three-Fifths Compromise (Three-Fifths Clause)
- Agreed July 12, 1787; replaced by the 14th Amendment, 1868
The rule in Article I that added three-fifths of a state's enslaved people, whom the text called "all other Persons," to its count for House seats and direct taxes.
Enslaved people could not vote, yet counting them gave slave states more power in Congress until the Civil War.
- Great Compromise
- Adopted July 16, 1787
The Connecticut delegates' plan for a two-house Congress that based House seats on population and gave each state an equal vote in the Senate.
The five-to-four vote broke a deadlock between large and small states that had stalled the Convention for weeks.
- Slave Trade Clause
- Agreed Aug. 25, 1787; federal ban took effect Jan. 1, 1808
Article I's promise that Congress would not ban the import of enslaved people before 1808. Congress's ban took effect January 1, 1808, the first day the clause allowed.
Deep South delegates made it their price for union, and New England backed it to win majority rule on trade laws.
- Fugitive Slave Clause
- Agreed Aug. 29, 1787 (Art. IV, Sec. 2)
A clause in Article IV that barred a state from freeing anyone "held to Service or Labour" who fled there, and said that person "shall be delivered up" to the claimant.
Congress built the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 on it, and enforcing them bitterly divided North and South.
- Federalists
- Ratification debate, 1787–1788
Supporters of ratifying the Constitution and a stronger national government, strongest among merchants and creditors in port cities. Their leaders included Madison, Hamilton, John Jay, and Washington.
After Shays's Rebellion, Federalists argued that only a stronger union could keep order, pay its debts, and protect American trade.
- Anti-Federalists
- Ratification debate, 1787–1788
The Constitution's opponents, strong among backcountry farmers, who feared that a distant "consolidated" government would swallow the states and threaten liberty. Patrick Henry, George Mason, and George Clinton spoke for them.
Distrust of central power lived on in the 1790s, when western farmers resisted federal taxes in the Whiskey Rebellion.
- *The Federalist Papers* (*The Federalist*)
- Published Oct. 1787–May 1788
A series of 85 newspaper essays, signed "Publius," that Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay wrote to persuade New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution. Hamilton wrote most of them.
The essays made the clearest case that a strong but limited national government would protect liberty, and courts still cite them.
- Federalist No. 10
- November 22, 1787
Madison's essay on faction, a group that unites around a passion or interest against others' rights or the common good. He argued that a large republic would control faction.
Anti-Federalists such as Brutus said a free republic had to be small, and Madison answered that size itself would protect rights.
- Ratification
- Dec. 7, 1787 to May 29, 1790; ninth state June 21, 1788
The approval of the Constitution by special conventions in the states, nine of which had to say yes before it could take effect. New Hampshire became the ninth on June 21, 1788.
Close votes in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York came with recommended amendments, which Madison drew on for the Bill of Rights.
Big questions
Explain the issues that created the greatest controversies during the ratification of the Constitution.
The biggest fights were over national power and individual rights. Anti-Federalists feared that a distant government with the power to tax would swallow the states, and they attacked the missing bill of rights. Federalists defended the plan in The Federalist Papers and won close states by promising amendments, which became the Bill of Rights.
How did the Constitutional Convention settle disputes over representation and slavery?
Delegates settled both fights by compromise, and they protected slavery without ever naming it. The Great Compromise ended the clash between the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan by basing House seats on population and giving each state an equal Senate vote. Slave states won the Three-Fifths Compromise and protection for slave imports until 1808.
Common mistakes
MistakeThe Virginia and New Jersey plans tried to settle the status of enslaved people.
In factLarge and small states backed the two plans in a fight over representation, and the Three-Fifths Compromise decided how to count enslaved people.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Plain Men
January 25, 1788
Key terms: “Mr. President”, Shays's Rebellion, Ratification
In January 1788, delegates from across Massachusetts met in Boston to vote on a proposed new Constitution for the United States.
A farmer named Amos Singletary spoke against it:
Amos Singletary
“These lawyers, and men of learning, and moneyed men, that talk so finely…”
Amos Singletary
“…they will swallow up all us little folks, like the great Leviathan, Mr. President; yes, just as the whale swallowed up Jonah.”
Jonathan Smith
“Mr. President, I am a plain man, and get my living by the plough.”
Jonathan Smith
“…I have lived in a part of the country”
Jonathan Smith
“where I have known the worth of good government by the want of it.”
He meant Shays's Rebellion, when western farmers who could not pay debts and taxes in hard money had shut down the courts. The uprising convinced many Americans, Smith among them, that the country needed a stronger national government.
Five states had already ratified, or approved, the Constitution. It needed nine to take effect. A no from Massachusetts, one of the largest states, could sink it.
The whole fight came down to one problem: how to build one government out of people who did not trust each other.
In All Cases Whatsoever
April–May 1787
Key terms: Articles of Confederation, Constitutional Convention, National veto (rejected), Virginia Plan, Bicameral
In May 1787, delegates began meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. Every state except Rhode Island took part. Over the summer, fifty-five men attended. All were white, and most were wealthy lawyers, merchants or planters. The old Confederation Congress had called the meeting
“for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation”
James Madison of Virginia had arrived early, with a plan for a far stronger national government. He wanted Congress to have a veto over state laws “in all cases whatsoever.” That was the same phrase Parliament had used in 1766 to claim power over the colonies.
On May 29, Virginia's governor, Edmund Randolph, presented Madison's ideas as the Virginia Plan. It called for three branches of government and a Congress of two houses, with seats based on each state's population or taxes paid. That meant replacing the Articles, not revising them. The debates stayed secret all summer, and most of what we know about them comes from Madison's daily notes.
Swallowed Up
June 9–July 17, 1787
Key terms: New Jersey Plan, Great Compromise (Connecticut Compromise)
Small states feared that seats based on population would let the large states run everything.
William Paterson
“New Jersey will never confederate on the plan before the Committee. She would be swallowed up.”
Paterson's New Jersey Plan kept one vote per state in a one-house Congress. The delegates rejected it, seven states to three.
James Madison · adapted from his notesAdapted
The States are divided not by their size, but principally by their having or not having slaves.
Gunning Bedford Jr. · Yates's notes
“I do not, gentlemen, trust you.”
Delaware's Gunning Bedford warned that if the large states broke up the union, the small ones would find a foreign ally.
On July 2, the delegates split five states to five over giving each state an equal vote in the Senate.
Roger Sherman
“We are now at a full stop.”
A committee worked out a deal. Switch between the two houses and compare Virginia with Delaware.
On July 16, the Great Compromise, also called the Connecticut Compromise, passed by a single state. Population would decide House seats, and every state would get two senators.
The next day, Madison lost again when the delegates voted down his national veto over state laws.
Property in Men
August 8–29, 1787
Key terms: Slave-trade clause (1808), Three-Fifths Compromise, Commercial Compromise, Fugitive Slave Clause
Southern delegates wanted enslaved people to count toward each state's House seats, even though they could not vote.
Gouverneur Morris
“Are they men? Then make them Citizens and let them vote.”
In August, the debate turned to the Atlantic slave trade, and South Carolina's John Rutledge warned the delegates:
John Rutledge
“Religion & humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations.”
John Rutledge
“The true question at present is whether the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to the Union.”
Virginia's George Mason, who enslaved many people himself, attacked the trade:
George Mason
“Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.”
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
“South Carolina & Georgia cannot do without slaves. As to Virginia she will gain by stopping the importations.”
Pinckney meant that Virginia, with more enslaved people than its planters needed, would profit by selling them south.
Southerners wanted laws regulating trade to need a two-thirds vote. The delegates sent that question and the slave trade to one committee.
Gouverneur Morris
“These things may form a bargain among the Northern & Southern States.”
The committee proposed protecting the slave trade until 1800. When South Carolina asked for 1808, Madison objected:
James Madison
“Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves.”
The extension to 1808 passed, seven states to four, with the New England states voting yes.
In return, the North got its half of the bargain: laws regulating trade would need only a simple majority. Congress could tax imports but never exports, which protected Southern tobacco and rice. This was the Commercial Compromise.
“Madison thought it “wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.””
So the Constitution never used the word slavery, but it protected slavery in three ways.
“First, each state added “three fifths of all other Persons,” meaning enslaved people, to its population count.”
That count set each state's share of House seats and direct taxes, yet enslaved people themselves could not vote.
Second, Congress could not ban the import of enslaved people before 1808.
“Third, anyone who escaped slavery into another state “shall be delivered up” to the person claiming them.”
1790: 697,681 enslaved people
Publius
September 1787–January 1788
Key terms: Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Faction, Federalist No. 10, The Federalist Papers
Supporters of the Constitution called themselves Federalists. Their opponents, the Anti-Federalists, feared it gave the national government too much power. Federalists were strongest among merchants and creditors in the port cities. Many Anti-Federalists were small farmers in the backcountry.
In New York, an anonymous Anti-Federalist writing as Brutus drew on Montesquieu's idea that republics must stay small:
Brutus
“History furnishes no example of a free republic, any thing like the extent of the United States.”
Madison replied in an essay known today as Federalist No. 10:
James Madison
“Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests;”
James Madison
“you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive”
James Madison
“to invade the rights of other citizens.”
Madison argued that a large republic would hold so many factions that no single one could take control.
Writing as “Publius,” Alexander Hamilton, Madison and John Jay published eighty-five essays, now called the Federalist Papers, to win over New York.
The writer Mercy Otis Warren, publishing anonymously, warned:
Mercy Otis Warren
“There is no security in the profered system, either for the rights of conscience or the liberty of the Press”
Like many Anti-Federalists, she wanted a bill of rights written into the Constitution.
By January 1788, five states had ratified. Then came Massachusetts, where this story began.
Thunder
June–July 1788
Key terms: Consolidated government
In June 1788, Virginia's convention met in Richmond. Patrick Henry, who had refused to attend the Philadelphia convention, led the opposition.
Patrick Henry
“Who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the people, instead of, We, the states?”
“He warned of “one great, consolidated, national government” that could tax people directly from a distant capital, as Parliament had tried.”
Edmund Randolph had refused to sign the Constitution in Philadelphia, but now he supported it to save the union.
Edmund Randolph
“I will assent to the lopping of this limb, before I assent to the dissolution of the Union.”
On June 21, while Virginia was still debating, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, enough for the Constitution to take effect. But without Virginia and New York, two of the most powerful states, the new union could hardly work.
Henry wanted amendments before Virginia ratified, not after. Just before the vote, he promised that if he lost,
Patrick Henry
“Yet I will be a peaceable citizen.”
Virginia ratified, eighty-nine to seventy-nine, after the Federalists promised to seek amendments.
On July 4, 1788, Philadelphia's parade included a float with thirteen columns, three of them unfinished for the states that had not yet ratified.
Benjamin Rush
“’Tis done! We have become a nation.”
In New York, Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists won ratification by thirty votes to twenty-seven. New York's convention also called for a second national convention to consider amendments. North Carolina and Rhode Island held out until the new government was already running, joining in 1789 and 1790.