8/12/2019 1997 Issue 3 - History Study: The Constitutional
Convention - Counsel of Chalcedon
1/3
THE
CONSTITVTIONAl
CONVENTION
The Time of the
Convention
As it turned out,
1787
was the perfect time
for
such
an
effort. Catherine
Bowen explains: Actually,
it was the one moment, the
one stroke of the continental
clock when such an
experiment had a chance to
succeed. Five years earlier -
and the states would not
have been ready. Since
then the creation and
operation of their own state
constitutions had taught
them, prepared them.
Five
years later and the French
Revolution, with its
violence
and
blood,
would have slowed the
-
states into caution, dividing
them
(as
indeed
it
divided
them) into opposing
ideological camps. (Ibid.,
p
135)
The Delegates to
the
Convention
The assembly of men
who gathered in
Philadelphia was quite a
remarkable one. Twelve
states (Rhode Island
excepted) had voted to send
a total of fifty-five
delegates. Rhode Islands
absence was not considered
a great handicap. The
political behavior of that
state was
so
universally
deplored that men did not
gladly seek the counsel of
the citizens. (Clarence
B.
Carson, A Basic
History
of the
United
States, vo .
/I, p.
83) Boston
newspaper styled the state
Rogue Island,
recommending that she be
dropped out of the Vnionot-
apportioned to the different
States which surround her. -
-
In Connecticut a speaker _
suggested that Rhode
Islands actions would cause
the savages of the
wilderness to blush calling
her a reproach and a
byeword among all her
acquaintances. Even the "
normally reserved
Washington was moved to _
comment: Rhode Island
still perseveres in that
impolitic
--
unjust --and
oTic
.
-
, _
might add without much ' -
impropriety scandalous
conduct, which seems to
have marked all her public
councils of late. (Bowen,
op.
cit.,
p
13)
During the convention
however, no more than
eleven states were
represented
at
anyone time
and barely more than thirty
delegates at any given
meeting. There are a
number of things which
stand out about this
assembly:
1 t was a relatively
young
gathering. The
average age was around
forty-three.
Only
fourteen
delegates were over
fifty.
Ben Franklin was the oldest
March/April, 1997 , THE COUNSEL
of
Chalcedon , 21
8/12/2019 1997 Issue 3 - History Study: The Constitutional
Convention - Counsel of Chalcedon
2/3
member at eighty-one.
Thirty-three were
forty-five
years old or
younger. Five
were
in
their
twenties.
The
youngest,
Jonathan Dayton,
was 26
years old.
2.
t
was a politically
experienced company.
Nearly three-fourths (36 of
the
55)
had
sat in
the
Continentill Congress
(at
one
time or another),
manyhad
been
members
of their
state
legislatures and helped to ,
write their state constitutions;
eight had signed the .
Declaration of Independence;
seven
had
been
state
governors, and twenty-one
hild
fought
in
the
War of
Independence. After
their
service
in Philadelphia,
they
would be
called
upon
again
and again to hold offices
of
trust:
Twenty
would
be
g o v e r n ~ r s
of
various states,
twenty VS
Senators,
thirteen
would
be members in
the
House
of
Representatives;
two would become President
and one Vice-President.
Several would
become
diplomats and many others
hold
cabinet ,
posts.
Their
total political experience at
the
state
and
national
level is
so
great
as
to
suggest that
as
a company
they are
a
dependable barometer of
American attitudes and
beliefs at the close of
the
eighteenth
century.
(M . E,
Bradford,
A Worthy
Company,
p.
:5:
It was an openly
Christian assembly.
All but
three were members in
one
of
the
established Christian
denominations. Bradford
counts, twenty-nine
AngliCans,
sixteen to
eighteen Calvinists,
two
M e t h o ~ i s i ~ two Lutherans,
two Roman Catholics,
one
lapsed
Quaker and
sometime.Angliean, and one
open Deist
Dr.
Franklin,
who
attended
every kind of
Christian
worship,
called for
public prayer, and
contributed
to
all
denominations.
(Ibid.,
pp.
viii,ix)
Quite a
few
had
been licensed to
preach the
gospel
in
their
respective
denominations
and
many
had received theological
training.
Calvinistic theology
dominated. f
the
55
delegates, 9 were graduates
of
Princeton
and students
of
John
Witherspoon,
4 were
from
Yale, 3
from
Harvard
(both still
staunchly
Calvinistic),
2 from
Columbia, 1 trom the
Vniversity of Pennsylvania,
5-7 from William and Mary
(Calvinistic
though
Anglican) 2 were
graduates
from
Scottish
.universities
22 THE COUNSEL
of
Chalcedon March/April,
997
(strongly
Calvinistic). The,
famous
skeptics
Were
conspicuous
by their
absence.
Not
all
the prominent
leaders
were present
however,
notably
Patrick
Henry and Richard Henry
Lee
from Virginia, Sam
Adams remained in
Boston,
John HanCOCK was filling his
second
tenn
as
governor of
Massachusetts and
John
Adams was in London,
Thomas Jefferson was in
Paris.
With
these
exceptions,
the
roster reads, ,
in Catherine
Bowen's words,
like
a
Fourth of
July oration,
a pil.triotic
hymn. (op.
ctt.,
pp.
3,4)
When Thomas
Jefferson read
the
list of
delegates, he proclaimed
the
meeting, an assembly of
demi-gods. (Ibid p.
4
The Common
.
COTlvictions
of the
,
e l e g ~ t e s
For all theirdifferences,
nearly all
the
delegates were .
agreed at a number of basic
points:
1. The Articles of
Confederation were
inadequate and
desperately in need of
improvement.
Both
those
who desired a strong central
government as
well as those
who feared centralized
8/12/2019 1997 Issue 3 - History Study: The Constitutional
Convention - Counsel of Chalcedon
3/3
authority were convinced a
change was in
order. But
only a certain degree of
change
about the government.
They want infonnation and
are constantly liable to be
misled. (Hendrick, op. cit.,
2.
They
needed
to p. 81)
thinkers. Rufus King
(delegate from
Massachusetts) had an
absolute horror of political
abstractions:
strengthen the central
4.
They were all
By
1786 he had put away
governmem
without skeptical
of
the
assertions entirely
any
earlier faith he
endangering the legitimate of
the
Enlightenment might have had in the
sovereignty of the states. thinkers
of
Europe. common man; the great
AU
were basically agreed Bradford states,
An
internal body of the people are
that the central government transformation of American without
virtue, and not
needed the power to lay and society in the direction of a
governed by any Restraints '
coUect
taxes, provide
for
the secularized egalitarian state of Conscience. Equality,
in
common defense, oversee was the furthest thing from his view,
was the unnatural
trade and commerce, and the minds of these men. (op. (jenius of
his age, the arch
conduct foreign affairs.
~ ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ~ ; ;
; ; ; ; ; ; ~
Enemy of the moral
Yet
to
guard against an
Theysil11ply
co\IldIIPt
i
world whose
aU-powerful leviathan,
imagine,this coungy
e p ~ h n g disposition
is
to
the central
f r o m b a s i c , a l b l i ~ ~ t
degrade what is
~ ~ s ~ r ~ : c : ~ s ~ ~ ; e r
~ o n " i c t i o n s .
n
this t h e y w ~ : ~ ~ ; ~ l ~
.. . r : ~ ; g u e
delineated and the ' greatly j s t a k e n to the contrary was
to
sovereign integrity
of
the several states preserved.
Madison was ,expressing a
common sentiment when he
said, All men having power
ought to be distrusted.
3. They were all sworn
enemies of Democracy.
Democracy was the enemy
to freedom. It was rule by
the mob. Both Federalists
and Anti-Federalists feared
it. Alexander Hamilton
saw t as one of the purposes
of the Convention to
cure
the people of their fondness
for democracies. Roger
Shennan would say, The
people immediately should
have
as
little to
do
as may be
cit., p.
ix)
Pierce
Butler,
delegate from South
Carolina, during the debate
on allowing foreigners to
hold
office
in this country,
stated that these people
brought with them not only
attachments to other
countries but ideas
of
government so distinct from
ours that in every point of
view they are dangerous.
(Bowen, op. cit., p. 207)
AU of them would later
come to view the French
Revolution with disgust.
They often spokewith
disdain of the philosophical
abstractions of the European
advocate principles
that do not exist. After
independence was achieved,
King was
qUick
to assure
English friends that there ,
was no likelihood of our
becoming zealous in the
, Propagation of Liberty and
the Rights
of
Man
Bradford,
op. cit., p. 12)
These sorts of confident
assertions are found
everywhere in the writings
of these men. They simply
could not imagine this
country departing from
basic, Biblical convictions.
In this they were greatly
mistaken.
n
March/April, 1997 HE COUNSEL
of
Chalcedon 23
