US Constitution (1787): Philadelphia Convention and Ratification

The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia from 25 May to 17 September 1787 and produced the Constitution of the United States, the framework of federal government still in force today. Called to repair the weak Articles of Confederation, the delegates instead designed a new system with a national legislature, executive and judiciary. After a hard-fought ratification campaign, the Constitution took effect in 1789.

Background: a weak confederation

During the American Revolution the thirteen states had bound themselves together under the Articles of Confederation, which came into force in 1781. The Confederation Congress could declare war and make treaties, but it could not levy taxes, regulate commerce or compel the states to pay their share of common expenses. Any change to the Articles required the agreement of every state.

By the mid-1780s the weaknesses were obvious. Congress could not pay the interest on the war debt, states imposed tariffs on one another’s goods, and Britain kept troops on American soil in breach of the peace treaty. A meeting at Annapolis in September 1786 to discuss trade attracted delegates from only five states, but it called for a broader convention in Philadelphia the following May.

The armed uprising of indebted farmers in Massachusetts known as Shays’ Rebellion in 1786–1787 alarmed many national leaders and persuaded George Washington to attend. In February 1787 Congress endorsed the meeting “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation”.

The delegates

Seventy-four delegates were appointed and 55 attended at some point; Rhode Island refused to send anyone. Most were lawyers, merchants or planters, and many had served in Congress or the Continental Army. Benjamin Franklin, at 81, was the oldest; Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey, at 26, the youngest. Several prominent figures were absent: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were serving as diplomats in Europe, and Patrick Henry declined to attend.

The convention opened with a quorum on 25 May 1787 in the Pennsylvania State House, now called Independence Hall, and unanimously elected Washington as its president. The delegates agreed to keep their debates secret, closing the windows despite the summer heat. Much of what is known about the proceedings comes from the detailed notes of James Madison, which were published only in 1840, after his death.

Rival plans and the Great Compromise

On 29 May Edmund Randolph presented the Virginia Plan, drafted largely by Madison. It proposed a national government with three branches and a two-house legislature in which both chambers would be apportioned by population. That arrangement favoured large states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Smaller states resisted. On 15 June William Paterson of New Jersey offered an alternative, the New Jersey Plan, which kept a single-chamber Congress with one vote per state while giving it new powers to tax and regulate trade. Alexander Hamilton of New York proposed a far more centralised scheme on 18 June, with a president and senate serving during good behaviour, but it won little support.

The question of representation nearly broke up the convention. A committee of one delegate from each state took up a proposal long promoted by the Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. On 16 July the convention narrowly adopted what became known as the Great Compromise, or Connecticut Compromise.

Under it, seats in the House of Representatives would be allocated by population and directly elected, while each state would have an equal vote in the Senate, with senators chosen by the state legislatures. Bills for raising revenue were to start in the House. Direct election of senators came only with the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.

Slavery and the three-fifths clause

Slavery shaped many of the convention’s bargains. Delegates from the Deep South insisted that enslaved people be counted for representation, while many northerners objected. The convention adopted a formula first used in a 1783 proposal for taxing the states: three-fifths of “all other Persons” would be counted for apportioning House seats and direct taxes. The words “slave” and “slavery” do not appear in the original text.

Other clauses also protected slavery. Congress was barred from banning the import of enslaved Africans before 1808, and a fugitive slave clause required the return of people who escaped to another state. The three-fifths clause gave the slaveholding states extra seats in the House and extra votes in presidential elections for decades.

Designing and signing the Constitution

Through the summer the delegates worked out the details. A Committee of Detail, chaired by John Rutledge of South Carolina, produced a draft on 6 August. Debates continued over the powers of Congress, the length of the president’s term, and how the president should be chosen. After rejecting election by Congress and by the people at large, the convention settled on a system of electors chosen in each state, later called the Electoral College.

The finished plan divided power among three branches: Congress under Article I, the president under Article II and a Supreme Court under Article III. Each branch could check the others, through tools such as the presidential veto, Senate approval of appointments and treaties, and impeachment. Federal law and treaties were declared “the supreme Law of the Land”, and Article V set out a procedure for amendment.

A Committee of Style, in which Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania did most of the drafting, polished the text and wrote the preamble beginning “We the People of the United States”. The final document was engrossed on four sheets of parchment by Jacob Shallus, a Pennsylvania clerk.

On 17 September 1787, 39 of the 42 delegates still present signed the Constitution. Franklin urged unanimity, admitting that he did not approve of every part. Edmund Randolph, George Mason and Elbridge Gerry refused to sign; Mason and Gerry objected above all that the document lacked a bill of rights.

Madison recorded that, as the last delegates signed, Franklin remarked on the sun painted on the back of Washington’s chair. He said he now knew it was a rising, not a setting, sun.

The ratification fight

Article VII provided that the Constitution would take effect once conventions in nine states had ratified it. Supporters, who called themselves Federalists, argued that a stronger union was needed for security and prosperity. Opponents, labelled Anti-Federalists, feared that a distant government would swallow the states and threaten liberty, and they demanded a bill of rights.

The debate filled newspapers and pamphlets. In New York, Hamilton, Madison and John Jay wrote the essays later collected as The Federalist. Delaware ratified first, unanimously, on 7 December 1787, followed quickly by Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut. Massachusetts approved by 187 votes to 168 in February 1788 after Federalists agreed to recommend amendments, a pattern several later states followed.

New Hampshire became the ninth state on 21 June 1788, but the new union would have been fragile without Virginia and New York. Virginia ratified on 25 June by 89 to 79 and New York on 26 July by 30 to 27. North Carolina held out until November 1789 and Rhode Island until May 1790, when it approved by just two votes.

The key figures of the convention and ratification are summarised below.

Consequences

The new government began work in New York in the spring of 1789. Congress was due to meet on 4 March but did not reach a quorum until April, and George Washington, chosen unanimously by the electors, took the oath as the first president on 30 April 1789. In response to the demands raised during ratification, Madison steered a set of amendments through the first Congress; ten were ratified in 1791 as the Bill of Rights.

The compromises of 1787 also left lasting problems. The protection given to slavery and the vague division of power between the states and the federal government fed political conflict for decades and were finally tested in the Civil War. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, adopted after that war, transformed the original document.

Myths and facts

Myth: the delegates were sent to write a new constitution. Congress authorised them only to revise the Articles of Confederation. The decision to start afresh was taken in Philadelphia, which is one reason opponents attacked the convention as exceeding its mandate.

Myth: the three-fifths clause declared that enslaved people were three-fifths of a person. The clause was a formula for counting population for representation and taxes. It did not define personhood; rather, it gave slaveholders more political power without granting any rights to the enslaved.

Timeline

• 1786, September: The Annapolis Convention calls for a general convention.
• 1787, 25 May: The Philadelphia Convention opens and elects George Washington its president.
• 1787, 29 May: Edmund Randolph presents the Virginia Plan.
• 1787, 15 June: William Paterson presents the New Jersey Plan.
• 1787, 16 July: The Great Compromise is adopted.
• 1787, 17 September: Thirty-nine delegates sign the Constitution.
• 1787, 7 December: Delaware becomes the first state to ratify.
• 1788, 21 June: New Hampshire’s ratification, the ninth, meets the Article VII requirement.
• 1789, 4 March: The first Congress under the Constitution is due to convene in New York.
• 1790, 29 May: Rhode Island becomes the last of the thirteen states to ratify.

Why it matters

The Constitution drafted in Philadelphia is the oldest written national constitution still in use. Its federal structure, separation of powers and amendment process have influenced constitutions around the world, while the compromises it made over slavery remind readers that it was the product of hard bargaining in a divided society.