Constitution of the United States

B

Slavery

The Great Compromise sparked a heated and no less contentious dispute over slavery. Even though the words slave and slavery do not appear in the Constitution, the convention included ten provisions dealing with slavery. The most serious dispute arose over how to assign House seats to Southern states. If seats in the House of Representatives were apportioned according to state populations that included slaves, Southern states would gain an advantage because of their large slave populations. Northern states pushed to exclude slaves from the population calculations altogether. Southern states resisted, threatening to scuttle the entire Constitution. Finally abolitionists from northern states compromised. They agreed to the infamous clause in Article I that counted slaves as only three-fifths of a person and that barred Congress from ending the slave trade before 1808. The settlement over slavery led the convention to accept the Great Compromise.

C

Presidency

Debate on the nature of the presidency and the manner of the president’s election dragged the convention into September. The delegates considered various proposals for a single three-year, six-year, and seven-year term. They debated whether the executive branch should be headed by a single leader or by many, and whether the chief executive should have the power to veto legislation, should be elected by Congress or the people, should be eligible to run for reelection, and should command the armed forces. Some delegates even hoped for a limited monarchy. Not until September 8, more than three months after the convention started, did the final shape of the presidency emerge: a single leader, elected to a four-year term and eligible for reelection, with authority to veto bills enacted by Congress. The president was also given command of the military and the power to appoint federal officials, subject to confirmation by the Senate. See also President of the United States.

D

Judiciary

Early on at the convention, Randolph of Virginia had proposed a Council of Revision, composed of federal judges and the president, to veto laws made by both Congress and state legislatures. The delegates rejected variations of this plan four times because, as Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur Morris said, those who interpret the laws “ought to have no hand in making them.” Instead, the framers agreed to create a single Supreme Court and to permit Congress to create lower federal courts.

E

Approval of the Constitution

After numerous votes settled the details, a committee on style and revision was assigned in early September to put the final results in language to submit to the people for ratification. This committee consisted of Hamilton, Morris, Madison, William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, and Rufus King of Massachusetts. According to Madison, it was Morris who was largely responsible for the language and style of the Constitution.

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The framers approved the text of the Constitution on September 15, and on September 17 all but three of the remaining delegates signed, attesting to “the unanimous consent of the States present.” This was no longer merely a compact between states, but a constitution for a new nation, recognized in the last two days when the framers adopted a preamble that began, “We, the People of the United States.”

IV

Ideas Behind the Constitution

Many of the framers, especially Madison, studied history and political philosophy. Two political theorists had great influence on the creation of the Constitution. John Locke, an important British political philosopher, had a large impact through his Second Treatise of Government (1690). Locke argued that sovereignty resides in individuals, not rulers. A political state, he theorized, emerged from a social contract among the people, who consent to government in order to preserve their lives, liberties, and property. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, which also drew heavily on Locke, governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Locke also pioneered the idea of the separation of powers. The French writer Baron de Montesquieu, who was the second major intellectual influence on the Constitution, further developed the concept of a separation of powers in his treatise The Spirit of the Laws (1748).

Colonial charters such as the Mayflower Compact of 1620 provided another inspiration for the Constitution. These charters seemed to give authority to the people to govern the territories to which they had migrated. Throughout the 18th century a vigorous debate raged over whether these charters permitted self-rule or subjected the colonists to the whims of royal governors. At their most radical, the colonial charters created autonomous legislatures with broad powers.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution sought a fundamental change from these earlier notions in two important ways. First, they put the Constitution above legislative power—indeed, above all governmental powers. The Constitution, particularly the Supremacy Clause of Article VI, establishes the “rule of law,” the idea that the government itself, including the president and Congress, must abide by the law.

The framers also rejected a basic assumption held by many democratic theorists, including Montesquieu, that true democracy was possible only in tiny territories with small, homogeneous populations. In famous passages in The Federalist Papers, Madison brilliantly argued that the old philosophers were wrong. Democracy could flourish, he reasoned, only in large territories with sizable populations and a diversity of interests that would block the ambitions of citizens to control the government. Individual interests and liberties could be most effectively protected in a system of representative government that was open to the voices of all. The people who agreed with this view of government and supported ratification became known as Federalists.

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