The Original Compromise: What the Constitutionʼs Framers Were Really Thinking

David Robertson

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199796298.001.0001
Published: 2013 Online ISBN: 9780199979707 Print ISBN: 9780199796298

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CHAPTER

1 Introduction 
David Brian Robertson

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199796298.003.0001 Pages 3–20

Published: January 2013

Abstract
What were the framers thinking? The framers aimed to build a stronger, republican national government, and as politicians
themselves, they understood that they had to compromise to construct this government. Farrand's Records of the Convention
provide the best source of information on what the framers were thinking, but they are very difficult to use. The Federalist
Papers do not provide a reliable guide to the framers' reasoning. This book uses Farrand's Records to provide a narrative of the
Constitutional Convention that is topical, accurate, and understandable. It emphasizes that Constitutional Convention
fundamentally was a political event: the delegates were political leaders engaged in writing rules for later politicians to use.
The delegates combined their ideas and their interests, engaged in collective political decision-making, advanced alternative
strategies for building a republican national government, and made choices in a sequence that itself shaped the result.

Keywords: Federalist Papers, Farrandʼs Records, politicians, republicanism, political compromise,

sequence of decisions
Subject: US Politics
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

The founders of their nation fascinate Americans, but their Constitution created a government that often mystifies them. What is the
logic behind it? What were the Constitution’s framers trying to accomplish in 1787? Why did they create the United States Congress,
the presidency, the courts, and the federal system the way they did? How did they expect these parts to work together? These
questions are vital now. We cannot understand today’s United States without understanding the thinking behind the Constitution.

The Constitution shapes American life today. The Constitution still provides the framework for the way the U.S. government makes
laws, defends the nation, and provides for Americans’ prosperity. The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate still must agree
completely whenever they make a law. States with large populations, like New York, still have far more seats in the House of
Representatives than small states like Delaware; in the Senate, however, each state is represented by two senators no matter how
small or large its population. The president, at the head of a separate and independent executive branch, still wields the power to veto
Congress’s bills, to appoint important officials with the Senate’s consent, and to command the nation’s military. Judges on U.S.
courts are still appointed to the bench under the original rules, and the U.S. judicial branch is still very independent of the other
branches. The states still control a wide range of policies that directly affect all Americans, such as policy toward crime and
 punishment, marriage and family, and business and labor. The Constitution still orchestrates the rhythms of American politics, with
Congressional elections every two years, presidential elections every four, and an Electoral College that chooses the president even if
his opponent wins the popular vote.

As I studied the founding, I discovered that there is no book that explains the framers’ reasoning during the meeting that produced
this durable Constitution. This book addresses the unfilled need for a narrative of the Constitutional Convention’s logic that is
accurate, understandable, and drawn primarily from the actual records of the Convention itself.

p. 4 I show that conflict and negotiation drove the making of the Constitution and explain its logic. Huge political differences, not just
philosophical disagreements, divided the delegates. To bridge these divisions, the framers applied their formidable political skills to

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work through the choices a new government required. Political reasoning accounts for the design of the Constitution—and it
required bargaining, deliberate ambiguity, evasion, and at times the surrender of dearly held objectives. The framers built their
Constitution with the bricks and mortar of political compromise.

In this chapter, I describe the framers’ aspirations for the Constitution, the importance of compromise in making the Constitution
possible, and the need for a narrative that explains the way these aspirations and compromises produced the final Constitution. I
describe the way I used political analysis and the framers’ own records to account for the way the framers understood their own
work, and the Constitution that Americans inherit today.

The Framersʼ Aspirations

What were the framers really thinking? The Constitution’s framers aspired to build a stronger and republican national government.
The framers’ core principles were effective government and a government based on the consent of the people. It would have been
hard either to build a stronger national government, or to build a republican national government. But it was infinitely more
challenging to achieve both these goals at the same time. They aimed to build self-government on a grand scale. The task was made
even harder because the framers disagreed about the way to make this government safe for their vital state, local, factional, and
personal interests. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention, in short, had set a nearly impossible task for themselves. Only
their formidable talents for political compromise made it possible for them to write a Constitution that narrowly won national
approval after a bitter, closely contested fight for ratification in the states.

A Stronger National Government

During the 1780s, many American leaders hammered away at the need for a more effective national government for the United
States. The Revolution had forged a sense of national purpose across the colonies, but just as Americans turned to nation-building
1
after the war ended, the sense of common purpose seemed to fade. A committee of the Confederation Congress in 1782 reported
2
that, for the United States to “become respectable, it must be by means of … more energy in” its national government. In 1783,
p. 5 George Washington urged Americans to strengthen their national government. In a public circular, he encouraged his fellow
citizens “to forget their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity,
and in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community.” It was essential, wrote Washington,
“that there should be lodged somewhere, a Supreme Power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederated
Republic.” In a nation so free and prosperous, “who will grudge to yield a very little of his property to support the common interest
3
of Society, and insure the protection of Government?”

Young, energetic leaders like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton committed themselves to strengthening the national
government. In preparation for the Convention, Madison wrote that the sovereign power of government must serve the “public good
4
and private rights” of the whole society. He believed that the inability of the Confederation government to manage commerce was
holding back the nation’s prosperity and damaging its future by making it difficult to pursue its comparative economic advantages.
5
He complained that the decentralization of so much power to the states was undermining the nation’s interests. Madison told the
delegates at the Constitutional Convention that he would “shrink from nothing which should be found essential to such a form of
 6
Government as would provide the safety, liberty and happiness of the Community.” Madison’s friend, Thomas Jefferson, frustrated
by the states’ unwillingness to fund the national Confederation government and support a navy, wrote in 1786, “The states must see
7
the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them.”

To strengthen the Confederation’s commercial powers, several states sent delegates to a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1786.
Madison, Hamilton, and five other men who attended later served as delegates to the Constitutional Convention. The Annapolis
meeting reported “that the power of regulating trade is of such comprehensive extent, and will enter so far into the general System of
the federal government,” that it could require other changes in the political system. They called for a Convention of all the states in
Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, “to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the

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8
Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.”

A Republican National Government

The framers also aspired to make their government truly republican—that is, a government whose authority was based on the
consent of the people themselves. Republicanism provided the guiding principles for any American government reform in these
9
years after the Revolution. As George Mason insisted at the Constitutional Convention, despite their differences, the American
10
p. 6 people agreed that any government of the United States had to be republican. Key leaders of the Convention, including Mason,
Madison, and Roger Sherman, were dedicated and unyielding republicans. Madison emphasized that the problems of the
11
Confederation threatened both the national interest and republicanism.

Republican government required the consent of the governed. Any government could be legitimate only when based on the authority
12
of the people. Key government officials, such as legislators, had to be agents of the people. In John Adams’s words, the people’s
13
legislative representatives should “think, feel, reason, and act like them.” In 1776, Congress asked the colonies to construct
14
governments with “all the powers of government exerted, under the authority of the people of the colonies.” During the
Revolution, the American people seemed to seize power from the British, hurriedly build new republican governing institutions,
15
“and began to govern themselves directly.” State legislatures, with at least one house popularly elected, “now became … sovereign
embodiments of the people with a responsibility to promote a unitary public interest that was to be clearly distinguishable from the
16
many private interests of society.”

These republican ideals required the separation of governing institutions. In an absolute monarchy, the king could make laws,
implement laws, interpret the meaning of the laws, and arbitrarily punish those who disagreed. Such abuse of power could be
17
prevented by the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers. Before the Convention, most suggestions for
18
reforming the Confederation government included proposals to add a new, separate executive and judiciary.

Republican ideals guided the delegates in their desire for a more effective national government. The delegates were themselves
accomplished and gifted republican leaders. Most had helped to build republican polities in their own states and had constructed
19
vigorous political coalitions to make them work. Connecticut instructed its delegates to consider changes in the national
20
government that were consistent “with the general principles of Republican Government.”
 From Aspiration to Compromise

The Constitution depended on political compromise because the two aspirations of republicanism and national government power
were hard to reconcile, and because they were tangled up in a variety of conflicting regional, state, and personal interests. Even in
theory, it seemed almost impossible to reconcile republicanism with a durable, effective, and “energetic” national government.
Conventional wisdom was that the people could govern themselves only in small-scale polities. Most delegates admired British
government, but they viewed it as too strong, overbearing, corrupt, and divorced from the public will. On the other hand, the new
American state republics seemed too democratic, too quick to respond to the fleeting popular passions of the moment, and too

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p. 7 unstable. Popularly elected state legislatures dominated government, and these state legislatures often passed laws that were
popular with voters and that dealt with issues such as paper money, relief from debts, and trade restrictions. But these laws
threatened the sound money, unshakable property rights, and predictable contracts that the framers believed were essential for a
robust market economy.

As political scientist James Morone pointed out, the framers insisted on popular consent and government based on the people, but
they did not want a government that was too democratic. Too much democracy imperiled the pursuit of national interests. They
wanted a national government based on popular consent, but in which that consent was controlled and filtered by institutions that
21
could check democratic passions and administer the nation effectively. Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, expressed
this sentiment at the start of the Convention. Gerry confessed that he had “been too republican heretofore: he was still however
republican, but had been taught by experience the danger of the leveling spirit,” that is, the willingness of state governments to
22
pander to voters with unsound currency, credit, trade, and other policies. Madison, in the heat of a debate over representation in the
Senate, warned that the Convention was “now digesting a plan which in its operation would decide forever the fate of Republican
Government,” and that “we ought not only to provide every guard to liberty that its preservation could require, but be equally careful
23
to supply the defects which our own experience had particularly pointed out.”

To balance republicanism with government effectiveness, the framers had to compromise. Abraham Baldwin, a Georgia delegate, put
the problem succinctly: “It appears to be agreed that the government we should adopt ought to be energetic and formidable, yet I
24
would guard against the danger of becoming too formidable.” On the one hand, they had to avoid government so enervated and
unstable that it could not further national goals. On the other, they had to avoid a government so powerful that it would rule by fiat.
No two delegates who spoke seemed to have exactly the same idea about the best way to achieve this balance, or about how much
the system should tilt toward republicanism or toward more national effectiveness. Several harbored the conventional view that no
effective national government over so large a territory could ever be truly republican.

The framers compromised by making institutions more independent of each other, and more capable of checking one another, than
any delegate had proposed at the start of the Convention. In effect, they resolved the collision of republicanism and effectiveness by
distancing the people from most of the levers of government. The people ruled by controlling a switch—by electing members of the
House of Representatives—that could sometimes start the machinery of government. But once the machinery started, it would distill
the people’s immediate passions through, as Madison termed it, a series of “successive filtrations” via institutions beyond immediate
popular control.

p. 8 Conflicting interests in the Convention made the aspiration to build an effective, republican national government much more
complicated. United by fear for the nation’s future, animosity to some of the states’ policies, and hopes for improving national
governance, these delegates disagreed among themselves about the policies a new national government should produce. More
effective national government meant different things to different delegates. New England wanted a more effective government to
secure trade agreements and restrict foreign competition. The South wanted free trade for its crops and a guarantee that the new
government would not interfere with slavery. Georgia and South Carolina wanted to continue the slave trade. Farmers in smaller
25
states surrounding New York wanted to prevent that state from using its harbor in a way that exploited them. A growing western
population wanted a government that could protect settlers against Indians and American trade on the Mississippi River. Every state
had a stake in a national government that could more effectively implement some tasks—but such a government also could harm any
state and unfairly advantage some states at the expense of others. Their agreement on general principles helped moderate these
 differences, but the records of the Constitutional Convention show that these differences divided the delegates from beginning to
end.

With aspirations and interests so intertwined, the framers had to negotiate almost every important feature of the Constitution. Their
republican political skills enabled them to work through compromise after compromise on Congress, the president, the courts,
national authority, state powers, economic management, slavery, and national defense. The resulting Constitution—this original
compromise—has proved remarkably durable and authoritative. It has anchored the national government through spectacular
economic growth, social changes, and expansions of democracy and rights that were inconceivable in 1787. It is easy to forget that
politicians produced this remarkable document—talented, often idealistic politicians, but politicians nonetheless.

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The Records of the Constitutional Convention

There is no narrative of these negotiations, as important as they are for understanding the United States. The best records of the
framers’ deliberations are the documents they wrote during the Convention. These documents chronicle its three-and-a-half arduous
months of intense debates. They reveal the frank discussions held in secrecy, and they show how frustrating stalemates, political give
and take, and reluctant bargains shaped the Constitution. James Madison, representing Virginia, kept a comprehensive record of the
p. 9 confidential deliberations of the Convention, attending each session and sitting at the front center, a “favorable position for
hearing all that passed.” Madison meticulously noted each discussion, motion, and vote, and he carefully wrote out these notes after
the delegates adjourned for the day. His task was easier because he was familiar “with the style and the train of observation and
26
reasoning” of “the principal speakers,” most of whom had served with Madison in the Confederation Congress. Madison’s notes
provide us with the most complete and accurate available record of the delegates’ remarks. The Library of Congress published
Madison’s Convention notes and other papers four years after his death in 1836. Other delegates also took valuable notes, including
27
John Lansing of New York, James McHenry of Maryland, and Rufus King of Massachusetts. These notes, however, are still
limited. They are not a word-for-word record of each session, and they include little information about the delegates’ discussions off
28
the floor of the Convention.

Max Farrand collected most of these Convention records and published them in three volumes in 1911. Farrand’s Records include
the sketchy official journal of the Convention, Madison’s notes, and other delegates’ records and letters. In 1987, James H. Huston, a
historian at the Library of Congress, added a fourth volume that included many manuscripts that became available after 1911.
Together, these four volumes of Farrand’s Records include about 1,600 pages of delegates’ records between May 15, 1787, the date
initially set for the Convention to meet, and September 17, when the Convention officially ended.

Although Farrand’s Records provide the primary source for understanding the reasoning behind the Constitution, it is practically
impossible to follow the framers’ logic simply by reading these volumes. First and most important, Farrand organized the records
chronologically, not by topic. He arranged the notes as the debates happened, day-by-day. But the delegates did not reason through
the provisions of the Constitution chronologically, completing one section before moving to the next. Instead, they constructed the
Constitution piecemeal, talking about an issue for part of a day, often putting it aside and moving on to some different topic,
returning to the issue days or even weeks later. The delegates’ decisions about critical issues like the presidency are scattered
throughout Farrand’s Records, making it extraordinarily difficult to find and understand the delegates’ thinking on most issues while
their reasoning evolved. Second, because the topics are scattered throughout Farrand’s Records, their arrangement makes it very
difficult to understand the sequence of compromise and collective choice. Agreements about the apportionment of seats in the House
of Representatives in July changed perceptions about power in Congress and affected choices about all the other government
institutions thereafter. Third, Farrand’s Records provide little or no context about the delegates’ strategies, interests, and
p. 10 circumstances. The delegates were experts in the Confederation’s problems, and did not have to explain to one another the
problems of Shays’s Rebellion, the slave trade, paper currency, debt relief, or foreign threats. The debates are sprinkled with
disconnected references to these problems. For that reason, it is very difficult for those who read Farrand’s Records today to
appreciate fully the information the delegates took for granted when, for example, they used Rhode Island as the prime example of a
state government gone wrong. Finally, the records are notes of eighteenth-century debates, so that their wording, spelling, and
 phrasing make it even more challenging for modern readers to understand. Small wonder that many people turn to other sources to
understand what the framers were thinking.

Accounts Written a er the Convention

After the Convention ended, many of the Convention delegates explained and justified the Constitution as they battled for
ratification in their own states. This rancorous struggle was most closely contested in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York. The
Federalist is a compilation of newspaper articles written between October 1787 and March 1788 to persuade New Yorkers to support

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the ratification of the Constitution. Written under the pseudonym “Publius” by two Convention delegates, Alexander Hamilton and
James Madison (along with John Jay, who was not chosen as a delegate to the Convention), the articles argued the need for the
29
Constitution, and defended each of the Constitution’s provisions in eighty-five topical essays. These essays were primarily written
30
for a New York audience; they had a limited circulation inside and outside that state.

The Federalist became the most widely read account of the ideas behind the Constitution. As historian Bernard Bailyn wrote,
“Generations of people—scholars and politicians alike—believed The Federalist to be the finest explanation of the principles that
31
underlie the American government and the most accurate analysis of the intentions of those who designed it.” The Federalist is
32
treated with reverence, and often used as an authoritative account of the framers’ reasoning. As early as 1789, in the first months
of the first Congress, a member of the House of Representatives cited The Federalist as an authoritative source of rules for removing
33
appointed national officers. Thomas Jefferson cited the papers as “evidence of the general opinion of those who framed and those
34
who accepted the Constitution of the U. States on questions as to its genuine meaning.” Two centuries later, President Ronald
Reagan’s Domestic Policy Council cited one of James Madison’s Federalist essays, rather than the 1787 Constitution itself, as the
35
authority for its claim that national government power had grown far beyond the framers’ intent. In 2011, conservative political
p. 11 commentator Glenn Beck published a popularized version of The Federalist because “they offer us a guide to understanding the
36
Founders’ core constitutional principles.” Supreme Court justices in recent years increasingly have cited Federalist essays as, in
37
Justice Scalia’s words, “indicative of the original understanding of the Constitution.” Both liberal and conservative Justices have
used The Federalist to establish the credibility of their arguments because, in the words of law professor Melvyn Durschlag, drawing
on the words of the “Framers generally and The Federalist … particularly is the secular equivalent to citing the Bible. It is an appeal
38
to a higher and more revered authority.”

But most Constitutional scholars know that The Federalist does not provide a reliable record of the arguments of the fifty-five
39
delegates who participated in the Constitutional Convention. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay wrote these polemical essays to persuade
New Yorkers to support ratification, not to provide a full or accurate record of the actual reasoning behind each written provision of
40
the Constitution. The rule of secrecy in Philadelphia allowed the delegates to be much more candid about their goals, interests,
anger, and fears than the authors of polemical essays meant to calmly persuade citizens that the Constitution was reasonable.

The Federalist gives the impression that the Constitution resulted from a relatively coherent, rational set of ideas, instead of a series
of the excruciating political negotiations that is plain throughout Farrand’s Records. In Federalist 2, John Jay (who had not
participated in the Constitutional Convention) wrote that the delegates, motivated only by “love for their country,” had
41
recommended a Constitution “produced by their joint and very unanimous councils.” Farrand’s Records proves that this portrait
Convention unanimity is false. Sharp conflicts of interest filled the Convention from beginning to end and drove it to the brink of
collapse in July. Angry delegates from New York and Maryland left the meeting early, and three delegates who stayed refused to
42
sign the final Constitution. Two of these delegates, George Mason and Elbridge Gerry, joined the Anti-Federalists in the fight
against ratification.

While The Federalist essays help illuminate the Constitution, in important ways they gloss over, evade, or even distort the delegates’
actual reasoning as revealed in the Convention records. Slavery offers a very important example. The Federalist barely touches on
43
the issue of slavery. But the delegates’ passionate conflicts about slavery and their grudging compromises on that issue profoundly
shaped Congress, the presidency, national government authority, and other provisions of the Constitution. Another important
example deals with the Constitutional provision that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.”
In Federalist 58, Madison described this provision as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm
 44
the immediate representatives of the people.” But during the Convention, Madison said that he considered this provision worthless.
p. 12 As late as August 8, he made a proposal to delete it. Even George Washington thought it was useless, but voted for it simply to
45
win later votes from its proponents.

Although James Madison’s Federalist essays suggest that the Constitution closely matched Madison’s own ideas for the design of
American national government, the final Constitution deeply disappointed him. Madison’s plans at the start of the Convention
differed greatly from the final product. He sought broader power for the national government throughout the Convention, insisting
that the national government required the authority to veto state laws. The final Constitution restricted national government power
much more than Madison wanted, and it gave state governments more authority than he thought safe. At the same time he was

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writing entirely positive Federalist essays for public consumption, Madison was writing private letters in which he intensely
46
criticized several specific provisions of the Constitution, and expressed pessimism about its future. Jefferson suggested that
47
Madison’s Federalist essays defended opinions with which Madison himself disagreed. Madison’s Federalist essays in fact
incorporated many of the strongest, most idealistic arguments for a republican national constitution that he made during the
Convention. In The Federalist, he wove these observations together into a case for a Constitution that fell short of his aspirations.

48
The Federalist, then, addresses “masterfully our permanent concerns with political power.” But the great virtues of The Federalist
are not the same as an authentic analysis of the actual collective reasoning of the many delegates who together produced the
Constitution. These shortcomings of The Federalist underscore the need for a more accurate account of the thinking behind the
Constitution.

Historians have written excellent, engaging narratives of the Constitutional Convention, but have not written a systematic, analytical
49
account of the reasoning behind the Constitution. Several landmark studies of the founding period are devoted not to the
Constitutional Convention alone, but instead to illustrating the themes that transcend Constitutional design, such as the brilliance of
American democracy (championed by nineteenth-century historians), the Constitutional construction of economic privilege
(advanced by “Progressive” historians like Charles Beard), or the evolution of civic republican ideals (put forward by Gordon Wood
50
and Jack Rakove).

Political scientists, notably Thornton Anderson and Calvin Jillson, have analyzed the Convention as a political event. These political
scientists, however, focus on the Convention votes and do not provide a systematic, comprehensive analysis of the Convention’s
51
reasoning and compromises. Rakove, John P. Roche, Forrest MacDonald, and David Hendrickson wrote about the Convention
with the political realism required to understand it, but none provided an inclusive, systematic analysis of the political negotiations
52
themselves.

p. 13
Analyzing the Constitutional Convention

This book addresses the need for an analytical account of the Constitutional Convention’s logic that is accurate, understandable,
organized by topic, and drawn directly from the actual records of the Convention itself. It reorganizes, distills, and synthesizes
Farrand’s Records into a series of chapters that examine each conceptual part of the puzzle of Constitution-making in 1787. The
Constitutional Convention fundamentally was a political event: the delegates were political leaders engaged in writing rules for later
politicians to use. In this process, the delegates integrated their ideas and their interests, engaged in collective political decision-
making, advanced alternative strategies for building a republican national government, and made choices in a sequence that itself
shaped the result.
 Ideas and Interests
Many authors who have tried to explain the logic of the framers fall into one of two camps. First, many emphasize the ideas and the
inherited experiences that the framers drew upon in writing the Constitution. Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, Douglass Adair, and
other prominent historians skillfully explained the impact of evolving American political beliefs rooted in republicanism,
representative government, the protection of property, and political freedom. Political scientist Donald Lutz carefully documented
53
the many sources of political ideas that influenced constitutional theory in the founding period.

Second, other historians consider economic interests as the dominant driving force of the Convention. In the early 1900s, Charles A.

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Beard boldly claimed that the Constitution was “an economic document drawn with superb skill by men whose property interests
54
were immediately at stake; as such it appealed directly and unerringly to identical interests in the country at large.” Many
historians, such as Forrest McDonald, Robert E. Brown, and James Ferguson, have argued that the evidence does not support
55
Beard’s claim. At the same time, many scholars have detailed more carefully the way that specific economic and political interests
did affect the proceedings and the outcome. Economic historian Robert McGuire demonstrated that interests and votes were closely
56
related at the Convention.

We cannot enter the mind of any delegate to specify how he personally untangled ideas and interests when he spoke or voted during
the Convention. One delegate’s eloquent appeal to principle may have masked his driving ambition for his constituents or for
national office. Another delegate’s defense of slavery or state powers may have reflected his sincere belief in the ideas of faithfully
p. 14 representing his constituents and in the moral superiority of his state’s social, economic, and political order. McDonald showed
57
that delegates worked to accommodate a variety of interests and ideas. Jillson studied the Convention votes and concluded that
58
ideas and interests divided the delegates in different ways. Rakove described the Convention as both an intellectual and a political
59
process, and he concluded that the relative role of ideas and interests is “elusive.”

The Convention records show that the delegates took principled positions that almost always served their political goals and
60
interests. Madison, for example, shrewdly coupled theory and pragmatic politics in his arguments.

Politics
Farrand’s Records shows that the delegates were skilled in politics. They keenly understood the political costs, benefits, and risks of
specific decisions. They had already engaged in collective political negotiations in state constitutional conventions, state legislatures,
and the Confederation Congress. They conducted the process for the Convention much the same as they had conducted the process
61
of making laws. Together, these delegates had to engage in political bargaining to formulate a single plan for a new government
that would receive substantial political support inside and outside the Convention. They had to reach agreement on a blueprint in
spite of the different ideals, priorities, interests, and experiences each one brought to the Convention.

The delegates showed exceptional political ingenuity in these negotiations. Farrand’s Records shows that they used all the political
arts of compromise, invention, and even evasion to arrive collectively at this new government plan. They compromised on the
contentious question of representation by devising one legislative chamber based on population and another based on the states as
political units. They constructed a new kind of federalism, in which the national and state governments would share political
authority. They also invented the system of presidential electors and the vice presidency to deal with the problem of presidential
selection and replacement. They resolved some intractable disputes simply by delaying implementation (the slave trade), by using
symbolic language (the House of Representatives’ control of money bills), and by writing ambiguous words and phrases to paper
over differences about specific powers (with such deliberately imprecise phrases as “general welfare” or “necessary and proper”).

Political calculation, negotiation, and compromise inevitably shaped the document that evolved at the Convention. These processes
played a more explicit role as the weeks wore on. Understanding that the framers were politicians engaged in the most important
political fight of their lives does not diminish them; I believe it ennobles them. By understanding the political obstacles to the
p. 15 Constitution, we can better appreciate its enduring achievements. The framers, for example, found a long-lasting solution to the
dilemma of ensuring the peaceful transition of power from one national leader to a rival.
 Studying the Convention offers the opportunity to understand real democracy as a profoundly human process. American history
offers no better opportunity to examine this process.

Broad Nationalism and Narrow Nationalism

The delegates’ policy strategies provide the intellectual bridge that connected their aspirations, their personal interests, and the
circumstances that drove them to achieve the ambiguously stated goal of making “the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies
62
of Government & the preservation of the Union.” Policy strategy refers to a set of related premises about goals, expectations,
63
assumptions, facts, and political tactics that political leaders combine to achieve a desired change in government outcomes. At the

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Constitutional Convention, the delegates’ policy strategies are found in statements of support and opposition for specific
Constitutional provisions. Farrand’s Records is filled with explicit inferences about public opinion, political necessity and
impossibility, interests, tactics, and expectations about the likely effects of one provision or another.

64
Two conflicting policy strategies regularly produced disagreements at the Convention. First, delegates such as Madison, Hamilton,
James Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris took a position in favor of broad nationalism. In this view, the national government required
strong and very extensive policy authority. The national government should exercise all the important powers of government, and the
state governments’ role should be reduced to a minimum. Madison was the most active supporter of broad nationalism. Madison and
his allies framed the problem of American governance as the result of too much state government independence and power. The
solution was a strong national republican government that could make national policy in all important areas. The Virginia Plan
embodied these notions and aimed to set the agenda for the Convention.

A second, contrasting position emphasized narrow nationalism. This position, championed by such delegates as Roger Sherman and
Oliver Ellsworth, sought to expand national authority in a narrow, limited way, and to protect as much of the existing policy
authority of the state governments as possible. Supporters of narrow nationalism wanted a stronger national government, but they
wanted a few specific new national powers, and not the broad, sweeping authority that Madison sought. These delegates emphasized
that the states were functioning polities that already enjoyed the loyalty of their citizens. States had to be part of any plan for
governing the nation. The most ardent supporters of narrow nationalism represented the small and economically vulnerable states
p. 16 between the large states of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Delegates from Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and
Maryland advanced the most effective opposition to broad nationalism and the Virginia Plan. Many of them collaborated on the New
Jersey Plan, which aimed to reframe the agenda of the Convention and divert support for the Virginia Plan.

The advocates of broad and narrow nationalism clashed again and again over distinct issues throughout the Convention. Neither
strategy decisively defeated the other. Indeed, a number of swing delegates voted with the broad nationalists on some issues and the
narrow nationalists on others.

Most important, key Southern delegates initially behaved as conditional “broad nationalists”—that is, they supported Madison’s plan
for broad national authority on the condition that seats in the new Congress were apportioned on the basis of population, a formula
that seemed to protect Southern interests. Once the Connecticut Compromise created a Senate that diluted Southern votes in
Congress, delegates from South Carolina fought for narrow national powers and protections for state power. Important swings in the
Convention, like the swing of Southern delegates away from broad national powers, followed from the sequence of decisions.

The Sequence of Constitutional Choice

The delegates engineered the Constitution piece by piece. They spent eighty-five working days debating and accepting specific
provisions in the Constitution. This incremental decision-making process made later decisions contingent on earlier ones, and it
made the Constitution increasingly complicated as the Convention unfolded.

At the Constitutional Convention, early choices influenced later choices. Delegates tended to accept most of their early commitments
65
as settled when they decided other issues. Most notably, the Connecticut Compromise in July changed the way the Convention
played out. The delegates arduously arrived at an agreement that each state would have an equal number of votes in the Senate.
 Rather than reverse this commitment or abandon the Convention altogether, key delegates accepted it and moved on to other issues.
But the Connecticut Compromise changed many views of national government institutions and authority.

The delegates resisted changing earlier votes because, with each succeeding day, they had sunk more and more time and effort into
developing areas of agreement. George Mason, for example, opposed the elimination of a proposal for House control of the national
66
budget because the change would “unhinge the compromise” on proportional representation. They did not want to revisit earlier
antagonisms they had overcome to make decisions. They also did not want to unravel these agreements—and risk wrecking the
p. 17 Convention—by pulling out one thread of the intricate fabric they were weaving. Furthermore, once the advocates of a policy
strategy had won a point, they subsequently worked to consolidate that gain by nurturing a coalition of allies and fending off

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67
challenges to these advantageous decisions. (There were exceptions, notably the process for selecting the president.)

Thus, the delegates made the Constitution through a sequence of political compromises, rather than through a deliberate, planned
blueprint. The most important sequence of events that drove the development of the Constitution involved the clash between broad
and narrow nationalism:

• Madison put forward the Virginia Plan to create a new national government based on the strategy of broad nationalism;

• opponents responded with proposals aimed at narrow nationalism;

• the adversaries of each strategy battled over representation until they compromised; and

• the consequences of this compromise affected subsequent compromises about national authority and institutional power.

The result was a Constitution that was acceptable to most of the remaining delegates, but that no delegate embraced wholeheartedly
at the end.

What the Framers Produced

The unexpected sequence of Convention compromises increased the complexity of the proposed scheme of government. The final
68
design was much more complicated than any delegates had expected when they arrived in Philadelphia. As the delegates grew
more uncertain about the way the Constitution would work in practice, several grew more cautious about ensuring that their vital
69
interests would be protected. By mid-August, Oliver Ellsworth observed, “We grow more & more skeptical as we proceed.” They
placed a priority on strengthening the defensive power of the institutions they believed would best protect their interests. Thus, the
delegates from the large states sought to increase the power of the House of Representatives because its allocation of seats favored
their interests, while the smaller, more economically vulnerable states favored Senate power because small states and large states had
equal votes in the Senate. These disagreements spilled over in the struggle over presidential power and selection. Delegates also
70
fought to protect state prerogatives in areas that the national government might endanger, such as state militias or slavery.

Second, compromises helped produce a national government with more authority than the Confederation government, but at the
p. 18 same time a national government that was difficult to use. As the delegates armed their favorite institutions with more
independence and the power to fend off rival institutions, they gradually built a more cumbersome policy-making process. Within
the national Congress, the House and Senate would have equal law-making power and would have to be brought to complete
agreement on any legislation. The president could veto the law, and even if the president approved it, the courts might assert the
power to rule that the law was invalid. Congress would declare war, but the president would conduct it. The Constitution also created
a government that was “partly federal, partly national” in the words of Oliver Ellsworth (a “compound republic” according to James
Madison), a system in which the state and national governments would share power—and, they knew, could struggle with each other
to control public policy. In June, for example, Sherman worried, “It would seem that we are erecting a Kingdom at war with itself,”
71
when delegates debated a rule that prohibited members of the U.S. House of Representatives from serving in state offices. Truly, it
was a government in which ambition counteracted ambition, as Madison described it in Federalist Number 51. But this result was
not the product of abstract, detached reasoning among the delegates, as Madison’s essay can imply. Rather, Madison was
rationalizing the result of collective, incremental political reasoning.
 The Plan

To analyze the Convention’s logic, I began by closely examining Farrand’s Records. I disentangled debates on separate substantive
issues and reorganized all the records into eleven separate conceptual categories: the delegates; the problems; the necessary
remedies; representation in Congress; the House and Senate; the presidency; the courts; national authority and federalism; slavery;
national defense; and amendments and ratification. For example, in chapter four, I drew on speeches about the problem of
controlling republican politics made on thirty-four different days of the Convention, between May 31 and September 15, and
organized them into a narrative about the problems of majority rule. I then wove all the records of the Convention debates into a

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preliminary 250,000-word draft of the political logic that played out in each area. This long draft quoted every substantive claim
made at the Convention. Finally, I condensed this long draft down into much shorter chapters.

To make the framers’ discussions easier to understand and appreciate, I frequently reorganized the sequence of comments during any
day’s debate on a particular issue. I changed the words taken from Farrand’s Records as little as necessary to make them easily
readable; thus, I left numerals and familiar symbols (“&”), which serve as reminders that you are reading the framers’ own accounts.
p. 19 I transformed most words (except in the text of the final Constitution) to modern American English spelling, spelled out
contractions, and corrected misspellings. Several delegates, and especially Madison, dwelled on the experiences of other federations,
past and present. To ensure the flow of argument, I condensed these references to other contemporary and historical nations, but did
not include long discourses on the workings of foreign confederations. I also condensed quarrels about representation of the states in
the Articles of Confederation. I rarely report the actual tally of the vote on a Constitutional provision, because I want readers to focus
on the reasoning behind the choices rather than a box score of votes. I dropped a very few minor disagreements, such as the
discussions of whether the United States could define piracies and felonies committed on the high seas (August 17) and whether to
speed up the ratification process (August 31).

I have organized this book so that it roughly parallels the organization of The Federalist. The first part, “The Illness and the Cure,”
discusses the political and economic problems that the delegates thought they were confronting (topics discussed in The Federalist
Numbers 1–22). This part also explains their general approach to solutions, the more specific proposals put forward by the Virginia
delegation, and the objections to the Virginia Plan by the authors of the New Jersey Plan. The second part, “The Politics of Building
Government Institutions,” discusses the way the delegates constructed Congress (The Federalist Numbers 52–66), the president (The
Federalist Numbers 67–77), and the courts (The Federalist Numbers 78–83). The third part, “The Politics of Government Power”
72
deals with federalism and the powers of the national government (The Federalist Numbers 23–51). Chapters 7 through 17
conclude with a brief discussion of the path of American government developments after 1787.

This book presents each element of the Constitution as the framers themselves understood it, and as part of a larger political struggle
to answer the challenging, divisive questions that were necessary to address in order to build a government. It begins by allowing the
p. 20 framers to describe in their own words the crisis they believed they faced.

Notes
1 Rogan Kersh, Dreams of a More Perfect Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 32–68.
2 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 [herea er, JCC], ed. Worthington C. Ford et al., 34 vols. (Washington,
DC: Government Printing O ice, 1904–1937), http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjc.html, September 25, 1783,
618. The Committee consisted of James Duane, John Rutledge, Thomas Fitzsimons, Elbridge Gerry, and Stephen
Higginson. Rutledge, Fitzsimons, and Gerry were delegates to the Constitutional Convention.
3 George Washington, “Circular to the States,” June 8, 1783, in The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick
(Washington, DC: Government Printing O ice, 1938), 26, 483–96.
4 David Brian Robertson, “Constituting a National Interest: Madison Against the Statesʼ Autonomy,” in James Madison:
The Theory and Practice of Republican Government, ed. Samuel Kernell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003),
184–216. In The Federalist Number 51, Madison aspires to a government that serves the national interest, a national
government with “a will independent of the society itself.” In an extended republic, “a coalition of a majority of the
whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good.” Alexander
 Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, ed. Jacob E. Cooke (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
Press, 1961), 352–53. Originally titled The Federalist when first published in 1788, the collection of essays o en has
appeared under the title The Federalist Papers over the past century.
5 Madison to James Monroe, August 7, 1785, in The Papers of James Madison, ed. William T. Hutchinson et al., 17 vols.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press and Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1962–1991) [herea er, PJM], ed.
William T. Hutchinson et al., 17 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press and Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 1962–1991), 8, 333–36, and “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” PJM 9, 348–50; Lance Banning,
The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1995), 54–55, 72.
6 The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 [herea er, RFC], ed. Max Farrand, 4 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University

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Press, 1937), RFC May 31, I, 53. Decades later, Madison remembered that public opinion was rapidly growing
supportive of a national government with stronger powers; James Madison, “Preface to Debates in the Convention of
1787,” in RFC III, 545. On growing support for a stronger national government, see David Brian Robertson, The
Constitution and Americaʼs Destiny (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 65–
73 10.1017/CBO9780511610622 .
7. Je erson, minister to France at the time, was frustrated by the Barbary Pirates, who preyed on merchant ships and
demanded tribute from the U.S. and other governments. Letter, Je erson to James Monroe, August 18, 1786, cited in
Library of Congress, “America and the Barbary Pirates: An International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe,”
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/je erson_papers/mtjprece.html (accessed March 24, 2012) .
8 “Debates and Resolutions Related to the Regulation of Commerce …,” PJM 8, 406–409.
9 On republicanism, see Robert E. Shalhope, “Republicanism and Early American Historiography,” William and Mary
Quarterly, 3rd Series, 39:2 (April 1982), 334–56 10.2307/1918756 ; J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment:
Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2003); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1967);
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1969), 46–90, and The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 95–228. On the way in
which republicanism melded with American economic interests, see Cathy Matson and Peter Onuf, “Toward a
Republican Empire: Interest and Ideology in Revolutionary America,” American Quarterly 37:4 (Autumn 1985): 496–
531 10.2307/2712579 .
10 RFC June 20, I, 346.
11 PJM 9, 348–50, 353–54.
12 Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787, 55; Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,
280–86.
13 Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996),
203.
14 JCC May 15, 1776, 4, 358.
15 James Morone, The Democratic Wish: Popular Participation and the Limits of Democratic Government (New York: Basic
Books, 1990), 53.
16 Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 187.
17 Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (New York: Hafner Press, 1948), Book 9, 150–
60, was the most prominent authority on the separation of powers most o en cited by the framers. Montesquieu wrote
that “the legislature is the general will of the state—the executive is the execution of that general will.” The delegates
o en invoked Montesquieu at the Convention; see RFC June 7, I, 71; June 18, I, 308; June 23, I, 391; June 30, I, 485, 495;
July 11, I, 579–80; July 17, II, 34; September 6, II, 534. Madison and his allies usually enlisted Montesquieu to defend
the Constitution in The Federalist Number 47, 324–27 (see also 52–56, 292, 295, 523). Opponents of the Constitution
also cited Montesquieu; see Luther Martin, “Genuine Information” (delivered to the Maryland legislature November
29, 1787) in RFC III, 197.
18 Roger H. Brown, Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 171–83; M. J. C. Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1967), 153–54; Gerhard Casper, Separating Power: Essays on the Founding Period (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 7–8.
19 Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, 128; Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787,
150–61. The constitutions of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia specifically separated government
powers, and the rest of the states implicitly separated powers.
20 RFC III, 585.
21 Morone, The Democratic Wish, 33–34, 63.
22 RFC May 31, I, 48.
23 RFC June 23, I, 423.
24 RFC June 29, I, 475.
25 Robertson, The Constitution and Americaʼs Destiny, 37–45 10.1017/CBO9780511610622 .
26 James Madison to Thomas Je erson, July 18, 1787, in RFC III, 60; James Madison, “Preface to Debates in the
Convention of 1787,” RFC III, 550.
27 When I cite these notes in this book, I cite Madisonʼs notes simply as RFC, date, volume and page. When I cite other
delegatesʼ notes and records, I also indicate the delegateʼs name.
28. James L. Hutson discusses the objectivity of Madisonʼs records in “The Creation of the Constitution: The Integrity of
the Documentary Record,” Texas Law Review 65:1 (November 1986): 1–39, and in James L. Huston, ed., Supplement to

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Max Farrandʼs The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 [herea er, RFC 1987 Supplement] (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1987), xx–xxiv. Robert Yates took notes on the proceedings until July. Yatesʼs notes were edited later
to advance partisan goals. I do not believe Yatesʼs notes, as they exist, can be accepted as a fair and reliable record of
the proceedings. For that reason, I use only one quote from Yatesʼs notes in chapter 7 below; this quote from Gunning
Bedford is one of the most widely cited quotes from the Convention.
29 New York Governor George Clinton had asked that Jay, a supporter of a much stronger national government, be
excluded from the Convention. While Jay wrote four of the first five essays in The Federalist, he fell ill and wrote only
one additional Federalist essay. Richard B. Morris, Witness at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay and the Constitution
(New York: Henry Holt, 1985), 22, 56–58.
30 Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 84.
31 Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2003), 100.
32 Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew, 103–104.
33 Rakove, Original Meanings, 350. The author was Hamilton, who had been nominated to serve as the first secretary of
the treasury.
34 Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Je erson (New York: Random House, 2010), 586.
35 Working Group on Federalism of the Domestic Policy Council, “The Status of Federalism in America” (unpublished
mimeo, c. November, 1987), 1–2, 7–9.
36 Glenn Beck, The Original Argument: The Federalistsʼ Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century (New York:
Threshold Editions, 2011), xxv.
37 Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997).
38 Melvyn R. Durschlag, “The Supreme Court and the Federalist Papers: Is There Less Here Than Meets the Eye?,” William
& Mary Bill of Rights Journal 14:1 (2005): 243–349, quote 315. See also Matthew J. Festa, “Dueling Federalists: Supreme
Court Decisions with Multiple Opinions Citing The Federalist, 1986–2007,” Seattle University Law Review 31:1 (Fall
2007): 75–106; Pamela C. Corley, Robert M. Howard, and David C. Nixon, “The Supreme Court and Opinion Content:
The Use of the Federalist Papers,” Political Research Quarterly 58:2 (June 2005): 329–40. In their opinions on the
constitutionality of A ordable Care Act of 2010 (National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Sibelius, June 28,
2012), the Supreme Court justices make eight separate references to The Federalist.
39 Richard B. Morris, Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay and the Constitution (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1985), 23; Richard B. Bernstein, “Charting the Bicentennial,” Columbia Law Review 87:8 (December 1987):
1588; Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew, 103; Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American
Constitution (New York: Random House, 2009), 407.
40 James W. Ducayet, “Publius and Federalism: On the Use and Abuse of The Federalist in Constitutional Interpretation,”
New York University Law Review 68 (1993): 821–69; John P. Roche, “The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action,”
American Political Science Review 55:4 (December 1961): 799–816 10.2307/1952528 ; Garry Wills, Explaining America:
The Federalist (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981); Samuel Kernell, “ʻThe True Principles of Republican Governmentʼ:
Reassessing James Madisonʼs Political Science,” in James Madison: The Theory and Practice of Republican Government,
ed. Samuel Kernell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 92–125.
41 The Federalist Number 2, 10–11.
42 Clinton Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 165, 188, 237; RFC September 17, II, 648–49;
RFC III, 588, 590.
43 Indeed, the word “slavery” is used only in reference to the political servitude of all citizens under a dictatorship, as
occurred in ancient Athens (The Federalist Number 18, 112) and could occur in the United States (The Federalist,
Number 29, 186). The words “slave” or “slaves” receive relatively brief mentions. In The Federalist Number 38 (247)
and Number 42 (279, 281–82), Madison briefly addresses the provision that permits the importation of slaves until
1808, arguing that the possibility of banning the slave trade in 1808 is a “great point gained in favor of humanity.” In
 The Federalist Number 54 (366–69), Madison uses the word “slave” or “slaves” fourteen times in six paragraphs,
defending the provision that slaves be counted at a ratio to whites of three-fi hs to one in apportioning of seats in the
House of Representatives according to population. Madison also uses “slave” as a synonym for “dupe” (The Federalist,
Number 58, 396). Compare to chapter 14 in this volume.
44 The Federalist Number 58, 394.
45 RFC August 8, II, 224; August 13, II, 280. In their dissenting opinion in National Federation of Independent Business et al.
v. Sibelius, four Supreme Court justices utilize James Madisonʼs Federalist 58 essay to argue that the House of
Representativesʼ power to originate tax measures is very important (24–25).
46 James Madison to Thomas Je erson, October 24, 1787, in PJM, 10: 209–14; Charles F. Hobson, “The Negative on State
Laws: James Madison, the Constitution and the Crisis of Republican Government,” William and Mary Quarterly 36

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(1979): 217; Richard K. Matthews, If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason (Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1995), 15.
47 Morris, Witness at the Creation, 19.
48 Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew, 124.
49 Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention; Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional
Convention, May to September, 1787 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966); Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier,
Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 (New York: Random House, 1986); Carol Berkin, A
Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (New York: Harcourt, 2002); Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men:
The Making of the American Constitution (New York: Random House, 2009).
50 Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787; Rakove, Original Meanings; Charles Beard, An Economic
Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1913); George Bancro , History of the
Formation of the Constitution of the United States of America (New York: D. Appleton, 1882). See also R. B. Bernstein,
The Founding Fathers Reconsidered (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 12–38. Political scientist
John R. Vile edited a very helpful research tool for the Constitutional Convention; see The Constitutional Convention of
1787: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Americaʼs Founding, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005).
51 Thornton Anderson, Creating the Constitution: The Convention of 1787 and the First Congress (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993); Calvin C. Jillson, Constitution Making: Conflict and Consensus in the Federal
Convention of 1787 (New York: Algora Publishing, 2008). See also Keith L. Dougherty and Jac C. Heckelman, “A Pivotal
Voter from a Pivotal State: Roger Sherman at the Constitutional Convention,” American Political Science Review 100
(2006): 297–302.
52 Roche, “The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action” 10.2307/1952528 ; Forrest McDonald, E Pluribus Unum:
The Formation of the American Republic, 1776–1790, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1979), Novus Ordo
Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), and Statesʼ Rights
and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1789–1876 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000); David Hendrickson, Peace
Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003). My own work also
emphasized political realism, but it, too, makes a larger point about American political development and provided
only an abbreviated narrative of the delegatesʼ political reasoning during the Convention. See The Constitution and
Americaʼs Destiny and “Madisonʼs Opponents and Constitutional Design,” in American Political Science Review 99:2 (May
2005): 225–43.
53 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1967); Wood, The
Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787; Trevor Colbourn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass
Adair (New York: W. W. Norton for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, 1974); Donald
Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988).
54 Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 188.
55. Forrest McDonald, We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958);
Robert E. Brown, Charles Beard and the Constitution: A Critical Analysis of “An Economic Interpretation of the
Constitution” (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965); E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of Public Finance,
1776–1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 251–86.
56 Robert A. McGuire, To Form a More Perfect Union: A New Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
57 McDonald, E Pluribus Unum.
58 Jillson, Constitution Making, ix–xi.
59 Rakove, Original Meanings, 15. See also Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the
Continental Congress (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1979); “The Great Compromise: Ideas, Interests, and the Politics of the
Constitution,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 44:3 (July 1987): 424–57 10.2307/1939765 ; James Madison
and the Creation of the American Republic (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown, 1990).
60 See, for example, Madisonʼs argument about admitting Western states into the Union on equal terms with the states on
the Atlantic coast; RFC July 11, I, 584–85.
61 Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in Early America (New York: W. W. Norton,
1988), 256; The Federalist Number 53, 360–62.
62 “Resolution of Congress,” February 21, 1787, RFC III, 13–14. In 1787, the term “federal government” was used to refer
to the national government established under the Articles of Confederation of 1781. The delegates to the
Constitutional Convention used the term in this sense, and the first sentence of the first number of The Federalist
refers to “ine iciency of the subsisting federal government.” In the United States today, the term “federal
government” commonly refers to the U.S. national government established by the Constitution. To avoid confusion, I
regularly use the term “national government” to refer to the object of the Conventionʼs work, and the “Confederation

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government” as the national governing authority under the Articles of Confederation.
63 I discuss policy strategy further in Capital, Labor, and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets from the Civil War to
the New Deal (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), xiii–xvii, 13–27, and in The Constitution and Americaʼs
Destiny, 17–25.
64 The following two paragraphs draw on David Brian Robertson, Federalism and the Making of America (Abingdon, UK,
and New York: Routledge, 2011), 21–25.
65 Political scientist Paul Pierson describes this process as “path dependence,” a tendency for a commitment, once
established, to become self-reinforcing because more people accustom themselves to the commitment and resist
changing it. On path dependence and sequence, see Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social
Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 17–78.
66 RFC August 8, II, 224.
67 In presidential selection, the delegates went back and forth between Congressional selection and election by a special
set of electors. The latter plan itself evolved through a long sequence of decisions. See chapter 10 in this volume.
68 See Robertson, The Constitution and Americaʼs Destiny, 97, 127, 163 10.1017/CBO9780511610622 .
69 RFC August 15, II, 301.
70 Robertson, The Constitution and Americaʼs Destiny, 131–236 10.1017/CBO9780511610622 .
71 RFC June 23, I, 386.
72 Wilbourn E. Benton made an e ort simply to reorganize Farrandʼs Records verbatim and arrange them by Articles and
sections of the Constitution itself. This compilation of the debates is nearly as long as Farrandʼs Records (1,558 pages
with appendices) and provided no analytical context. Wilbourn E. Benton, ed., 1787: Dra ing the U.S. Constitution
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986).