Founding America (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Jack N. Rakove [9]
The road to constitutional reform began in Virginia. In January 1786 the Virginia legislature adopted a resolution inviting the other states to send commissioners to a convention where they could discuss the need to vest commercial powers in Congress. Its own delegation to this meeting included James Madison, who had spent nearly four continuous years at Congress before the term-limits provision of the Articles of Confederation sent him back to Virginia. Eight states appointed commissioners to attend this meeting at Annapolis. But when the appointed time came in September, only a dozen delegates from five states appeared—too few to proceed to business. But those present included Madison, Alexander Hamilton from New York, and John Dickinson (the principal drafter of the Confederation) from Delaware. Rather than confess defeat and adjourn, those present invited the states to appoint delegates to attend a second convention to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787. Its agenda would not be limited to commerce, but extend instead to the general woes of the Confederation.
In retrospect, the Annapolis conference appears to have been a bold move launched by a determined and artful group of reformers. At the time, it was more akin to a desperate gamble. The Annapolis delegates could not be confident that the states would respond favorably. They had to worry that their invitation, like their meeting itself, could be interpreted as yet another insult to Congress, because the Articles of Confederation contained no provision authorizing the meeting of such conventions. And should a general convention actually assemble, they had no assurance it would be able to reach agreement. Some knowing observers, like John Jay (Congress’s secretary of foreign affairs) thought the Philadelphia meeting might prove useful for discussion only. Yet at the same time, once the idea of a general convention had been proposed, it naturally acquired its own momentum and logic. All the other expedients had failed. Madison, Hamilton, and their allies no longer believed that the cause of reform could wait indefinitely. Some Americans had begun to speculate that the revolutionary union of thirteen states could break up into smaller confederacies, and that this in turn could create fresh opportunities for the empires of Europe to meddle in American affairs.
In the intervening months, the movement for general constitutional reform gathered strength. Virginia was the first state to act and appoint a delegation. In February 1787 the Continental Congress added its own endorsement of the convention. Eventually, twelve of the thirteen state legislatures appointed delegates. The lone holdout was Rhode Island, a determinedly “anti-federal” state since its veto had killed the impost amendment of 1781. But the fact that Rhode Island did not even send a delegation to Philadelphia had a liberating effect on the convention, persuading it to abandon the rule requiring alterations to the Confederation to be approved by all thirteen state legislatures.
Madison’s preparations for the convention decisively shaped its agenda. Three elements of his program of reform proved critical to the deliberations that began in late May (see p. 317). First, Madison believed in empowering the national government to enact, execute, and adjudicate its own laws, without having to rely on the states to carry out its decisions. This in turn required reconstituting the Union as a normal government, with independent legislative, executive, and judicial departments. Second, the legislative power of this government should be extensive, potentially including the authority to overturn state laws. Third, as a matter of justice, Madison favored allocating seats in both houses of the new legislature on the basis of population or wealth, replacing the “one state, one vote” rule of the Confederation. All of these ideas were incorporated in the Virginia Plan that Governor Edmund Randolph presented on May 29 (p. 335).
The delegates generally accepted Madison’s first principle but delayed judgment