Founding America (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Jack N. Rakove [10]
This decision so discouraged some large-state delegates that they briefly debated whether to proceed. No one, however, was anxious to abandon the project of reform, and the longer the meeting went on, the more inclined many delegates were to portray the decision on the Senate as being as much of a compromise as the decision on the House of Representatives. In the weeks after this vote, the delegates turned their attention to the other two parts of Madison’s program. In place of the broad grant of legislative authority envisioned by the Virginia Plan, they gradually developed a list of enumerated powers, including most notably an almost unfettered power of taxation and the right to regulate interstate and foreign commerce.
The most difficult issue the framers faced as the convention moved toward adjournment was the design of the presidency. In the eighteenth century, executive power was still essentially monarchical power, and it was difficult to design an effective national executive on republican principles. Moreover, the framers were genuinely uncertain about the best means of selecting the president. Active debate on the presidency thus continued into the final fortnight of deliberation in September. As it continued, the authority of the novel office the framers were creating grew stronger, but the uncertainties about its political character persisted.
The convention concluded its work on September 17,1787. Three of the forty-two delegates still in attendance refused to sign the completed Constitution, but the others fully supported its ratification. To achieve that goal, they had also designed a new procedure. Rather than require approval by all thirteen legislatures, the convention instead proposed to submit the Constitution to special, popularly elected conventions in each state. The approval of nine, not thirteen, would be sufficient for the new government to take effect. State conventions were asked to approve the Constitution in its entirety (p. 410).
Over the next eleven months, Americans extensively debated the Constitution—in the press, in taverns and churches, in popular meetings, and, most important, in the state conventions. The debate was wide-ranging and multifaceted. The Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution seized upon numerous clauses and provisions that they saw as laying a basis for eroding the residual authority of the states and the rights and liberties of citizens. Its Federalist supporters argued that the Continental Congress and the Confederation it represented were on the brink of collapse, and that a reinvigorated national government was essential to prosperity and security. Over time, they pointedly answered many of the specific charges that Anti-Federalists leveled against individual clauses.
In many ways this debate rivaled the great discussion of resistance and independence that preoccupied the colonists in the period 1774-1776. It focused public discussion across the country and encouraged the development of alliances that crossed state lines. More important, both the debates in Philadelphia that produced the Constitution and those that led to its ratification allowed Americans to rethink the experiment they had launched in 1776 when they first began writing new constitutions. Then, the urgency of the war and inexperience had made it difficult to consider