History Of America
Spring 1787. The American Revolution had been won.
But there was no peace.
Because there was essentially no government. There were states. But they weren’t united. Not even close.
There was no mechanism to collect taxes.
No way to provide for the national defense.
The nation was living on the edge of anarchy.
George Washington understood this. So did James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. So did many others.
Something had to be done. And fast.
The word went out across the land. A new Constitutional Convention was called for. When Washington announced he would be there, the meeting gained instant credibility.
Fifty-five men from twelve states arrived in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft the framework of a national government. There was no guarantee that they would succeed. And even if they did, there was no guarantee that the American people would accept their plan.
Failure was a real possibility. And everybody knew it.
The different interests of the states were just too pronounced—over trade, taxes, and slavery to name just three of a dozen points of conflict.
Yet, they all knew that they had to succeed. Or there would be no country—just a loose collection of individual territories sharing the same continent, easy prey for the European powers.
Not only was America’s future on the line, but so was the glorious principle of self-government as stated in the Declaration of Independence, the reason for the Revolutionary War.
So, these fifty-five men locked themselves in a room for four months, working six days a week, through the middle of a hot Philadelphia summer to get it done. They all agreed they would say nothing to the press about their deliberations.
They even closed the window shutters so that no one could look in, making a very hot room even hotter.
As the temperature rose outside, tempers rose inside. Still, they persevered.
On September 17 they finished, and the country and the world learned what they had produced—the Constitution of the United States, 4,500 words of collaborative genius.
How did they do it? There are many answers, many happy accidents, and perhaps even divine intervention. But here are three reasons that stand out.
First, they knew the stakes.
The Articles of Confederation under which the country had been operating since the Revolution was inadequate. This was dramatically demonstrated in 1786 when a group of New England farmers took up arms in a tax dispute. Known as Shays’ Rebellion, the rebels came close to overturning the state government of Massachusetts.
No one wanted anarchy. But anarchy was staring the country in the face.
Second, these were very capable men.
They were both learned and pragmatic. Many, like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, and James Wilson were steeped in the great works from classical antiquity—from Thucydides to Aristotle, from Livy to Cicero—and, of course, they knew their Bible.
They were also men of the Enlightenment and saw politics as a kind of science. They studied what had worked in the past and what had failed.
But, perhaps even more important, they also had enormous practical wisdom—the sorts of hard lessons that could only be gained by experience. The Americans for much of the 18th century had been effectively governing themselves because the British Crown mostly ignored them. Contrast that to Bourbon France or Czarist Russia, where one person wielded absolute power.
Third, they were prepared to compromise.
Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the Constitutional Convention is that they stuck it out. The delegates disagreed on almost everything. They disagreed on how power should be divided, they disagreed on how senators and representatives should be chosen, how much power the executive should have, and how much the court should have. And, most of all, they disagreed on slavery. Yet, on every issue—often after furious debates—they reached a compromise.
The easy thing would have been to go home and denounce the entire project. A few did. But most didn’t. They knew they had to make this work. There was no good alternative.
And there was a final and crucial element: the paternal presence of George Washington. No one wanted to fail in front of the General. He had come out of retirement and put his reputation on the line to preside over this convention. If it did not succeed all the sacrifices he had made to win the war would have been in vain. He knew it and everyone in the room knew it.
Washington rarely spoke. But he didn’t have to. His mere presence was enough to remind them just how important this moment was. It’s not by accident that we call him the father of the country.
The Constitution was designed to deal with the crisis of the moment, but also to guide the future of the young nation. It has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
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