acquainted with Man and…all the passions that influence him,” and as “no great Orator” but “clear, copious, and comprehensive,” Wilson took an almost uncompromising position for a powerful national government. He was supported by the two wealthy and sophisticated Morrises, Robert and Gouverneur, and by several other members of a strong delegation, including Thomas Fitzsimmons, a merchant and banker and one of two Catholics among the delegates.
A noted man at the convention was the head of the Delaware delegation, John Dickinson, a distinguished lawyer, member of several Congresses, and the author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania , a widely read tract, in the years just prior to the Revolution, on the proper and improper powers of Parliament. Massachusetts could not send its ablest sons to the convention—John Adams was in London, Samuel Adams was aging, James Bowdoin bereft of his governorship, General Knox in New York serving as Secretary of War—but the Bay State was nevertheless able to contribute four gifted moderate nationalists: Nathaniel Gorham of Charlestown, Caleb Strong of Northampton, Rufus King of Newburyport, and Elbridge Gerry of Marblehead. This quartet was matched in prestige and articulateness by South Carolina’s trio of the experienced planter-lawyer John Rut-ledge, the eminent lawyer-general Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and hissecond cousin Charles Pinckney, deeply experienced in law, politics, and soldiering for a man still in his twenties. The strangest delegation was New York’s, consisting of the ambitious continentalist Alexander Hamilton “chaperoned”—and outvoted—by two cautious anti-Federalists.
On the face of it, the cardinal question facing the convention seemed simple: how much power to yield to the new federal government at the expense of the states? This “division of powers” was closely related, however, to “separation of powers.” How should power be divided up among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the new federal government? And these two questions were related in turn to extraordinarily complex issues of representation: by what persons should members of the two houses of Congress, the executive, and the judiciary be appointed or elected, for terms of what length, and with what checks or vetoes upon one another? And attitudes toward all these questions were closely affected by delegates’ calculations of local and regional advantage; by personal experience, interest, and ideology; by concern for the likely impact of the new constitution on issues such as slavery, western expansion, foreign relations, economic policy; by faith—or lack of it—in the people’s intelligence and in majority rule. The delegates had to think in terms of literally hundreds of possible permutations and combinations, with every new decision possibly upsetting positions previously arrived at.
The Virginia Plan provided a focus that helped avert parliamentary anarchy. Day after day Madison and his allies mustered the votes to put through major parts of their program, at least provisionally. By the second week of June, however, the opponents of the Virginia Plan were organizing a counterattack. The immediate issue was the most divisive that faced the convention: how the small states and the big states would be represented in Congress. And this issue was inseparable from the question of how much power Congress would wield.
On June 15 William Paterson of New Jersey rose to join battle—a gentleman of “about 34 ys. of age, of a very low stature,” Pierce noted, and of rather modest appearance and presence, but “one of those kind of Men whose powers break in upon you, and create wonder and astonishment.” He offered a counterplan to the Virginians’, supported by men who were less famous throughout America than delegates like Madison and Hamilton, but well known and highly regarded in their states, nonetheless: men like Roger Sherman, a Connecticut
A noted man at the convention was the head of the Delaware delegation, John Dickinson, a distinguished lawyer, member of several Congresses, and the author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania , a widely read tract, in the years just prior to the Revolution, on the proper and improper powers of Parliament. Massachusetts could not send its ablest sons to the convention—John Adams was in London, Samuel Adams was aging, James Bowdoin bereft of his governorship, General Knox in New York serving as Secretary of War—but the Bay State was nevertheless able to contribute four gifted moderate nationalists: Nathaniel Gorham of Charlestown, Caleb Strong of Northampton, Rufus King of Newburyport, and Elbridge Gerry of Marblehead. This quartet was matched in prestige and articulateness by South Carolina’s trio of the experienced planter-lawyer John Rut-ledge, the eminent lawyer-general Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and hissecond cousin Charles Pinckney, deeply experienced in law, politics, and soldiering for a man still in his twenties. The strangest delegation was New York’s, consisting of the ambitious continentalist Alexander Hamilton “chaperoned”—and outvoted—by two cautious anti-Federalists.
On the face of it, the cardinal question facing the convention seemed simple: how much power to yield to the new federal government at the expense of the states? This “division of powers” was closely related, however, to “separation of powers.” How should power be divided up among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the new federal government? And these two questions were related in turn to extraordinarily complex issues of representation: by what persons should members of the two houses of Congress, the executive, and the judiciary be appointed or elected, for terms of what length, and with what checks or vetoes upon one another? And attitudes toward all these questions were closely affected by delegates’ calculations of local and regional advantage; by personal experience, interest, and ideology; by concern for the likely impact of the new constitution on issues such as slavery, western expansion, foreign relations, economic policy; by faith—or lack of it—in the people’s intelligence and in majority rule. The delegates had to think in terms of literally hundreds of possible permutations and combinations, with every new decision possibly upsetting positions previously arrived at.
The Virginia Plan provided a focus that helped avert parliamentary anarchy. Day after day Madison and his allies mustered the votes to put through major parts of their program, at least provisionally. By the second week of June, however, the opponents of the Virginia Plan were organizing a counterattack. The immediate issue was the most divisive that faced the convention: how the small states and the big states would be represented in Congress. And this issue was inseparable from the question of how much power Congress would wield.
On June 15 William Paterson of New Jersey rose to join battle—a gentleman of “about 34 ys. of age, of a very low stature,” Pierce noted, and of rather modest appearance and presence, but “one of those kind of Men whose powers break in upon you, and create wonder and astonishment.” He offered a counterplan to the Virginians’, supported by men who were less famous throughout America than delegates like Madison and Hamilton, but well known and highly regarded in their states, nonetheless: men like Roger Sherman, a Connecticut
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