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Convention: A Daily Journal

Center for Civics Education

Convention: A Daily Journal

Convention: A Daily Journal is a day-by-day journal of the 1787 Constitutional Convention convened by twelve of the original thirteen states to amend the Articles of Confederation and create a “more perfect union.” It chronicles the daily activities of the Convention, profiles the delegates and their interactions with each other, and looks back to life in America in the 1780s. Writing in the first person, the story is told from an “observer” hearing events as told in contemporary newspaper accounts and delegates’ personal notes and letters.


May 24, 1788

July 19, 2021 - 5 minute read


The Ninth Pillar, Massachusetts Centinel

On this day in 1788, General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney wrote to George Washington, informing him that “South Carolina has ratified the federal Constitution. Our Convention assembled the 12th instant, and yesterday the vote of ratification was taken – 149 Ayes - & 73 Noes. I enclose you a list of the Members who voted on each side. You will be pleased to find that the names you are best acquainted with, were in favour of the Constitution, and that those who were against it, have declared they would do all in their power to reconcile their constituents to its adoption and would exert themselves in its support.”

The same day, South Carolina Governor Thomas Pinckney (Gen. Pinckney’s brother) signed the Form of Ratification. A vigorous debate over the merits of the Constitution had taken place in the House of Representatives for three days in January before the legislature approved calling the ratification convention and election of its delegates. The debate had been lopsided. The burden of pointing out the Constitution’s flaws had fallen almost entirely on Rawlins Lowndes, and he gladly accepted it. Against him were arrayed brilliant defenses presented by Gen. Pinckney, John Rutledge, and other leading men of South Carolina.  The outcome was never in doubt, but the debate was important.  As Lowndes noted in his closing remarks, he had spoken “merely to point out those dangers to which his fellow citizens were exposed.”

It had taken two weeks for news from Philadelphia to reach Charleston reporting that a proposed Constitution had been drafted and forwarded to the Confederacy Congress with the recommendation that it be approved by conventions in each State comprised of delegates elected by the people therein.  It took even more time for the news to travel to the rural northern part of the State. By then the newspapers fully engaged, printing George Mason’s objections to the Constitution in December along with numerous articles and broadsides under pseudonyms such as “Cato,” “Maecenas,” and “Caroliniensis” and by authors writing under their own names, such as Richard Henry Lee, Charles Pinckney, and James Wilson. Eighty-five essays later known as The Federalist Papers had circulated between October and May.

Elections of delegates to the ratifying convention took place in mid-April. Those eligible to vote were free white males twenty-one years of age or older who had lived in the State for at least one year, acknowledged the existence of a god and future state of punishments and rewards, and met specified property qualifications. Because the number of delegates allowed for each district was nearly identical to those for the State legislature, the rural areas, particularly those in the west where opposition to the Constitution was strongest, were underrepresented. 

Although the convention convened as scheduled on May 12, few records of the actual debates survive. The official journal notes that a quorum was lacking on the first day, but the presence of one hundred and seventy-three members on May 13 permitted them to proceed. Gov. Thomas Pinckney was elected President, rules of procedure were adopted, and other convention officers were appointed. 

The scant convention journal records that Gen. Pinckney opened the debate on Wednesday, May 14 by extolling the virtues of republican government and the necessity of union. “We have been taught here to believe that all power of right belongs to the people,” he began, “that it flows immediately from them, and is delegated to their officers for the public good; that our rulers are the servants of the people, amenable to their will, and created for their use.”  Americans were accustomed to self-government, he asserted, but “how different are the governments of Europe! There the people are the servants and subject of their rulers; there merit and talent have little or no influence; but all the honors and offices of government are swallowed up by birth, by fortune, or by rank.”

Pinckney’s hope and prayer was that “the effects of the revolution may never cease to operate until they have unshackled all the nations that have firmness to resist the fetters of despotism.” The United States, he said, “without precedent, and with the experience of but a few years, the [Constitutional] Convention was called upon to form a system for a people differing from all others we are acquainted with.”

On May 20, “the convention went through the discussion of the Federal Constitution by paragraphs.”  How thoroughly the proposed form of government was debated is doubtful; the very next day Gen. Thomas Sumpter moved to adjourn the convention until the following October “in order to give time for the further consideration of the Federal Constitution.” Apparently the object of the motion was to delay until Virginia made its decision, scheduled for some time in June. After a lengthy discussion, Sumpter’s motion failed 46 – 89. 

The next day, Edward Rutledge, a pro-Constitution delegate, offered a motion to form a committee to draft amendments that might be offered in the first Congress should the Constitution be adopted. It was apparent that such amendments had already been prepared because the committee was appointed and reported back to the convention the same day.

Most of the debate on May 23 focused on the committee’s report. At the end of the day, the South Carolina ratifying convention approved the Constitution by a healthy margin of 76 votes.  One hundred forty-nine delegates voted in favor of ratification; seventy-three voted against and fifteen abstained or were absent. Most of the “no” votes represented rural and inland regions which were under-represented in the State legislature and, consequently, in the convention. 

Gen. Pinckney had frequently waxed eloquently about the right of people to govern themselves. In his May 14 soliloquy, he had actually classified the people of the States as “commercial men…professional men…owners and cultivators of the soil” and explained how they were “connected with and dependent upon each other, even though “differing in extent of territory, manners, population, and products.” Among the “advantages of a republic” to these diverse peoples was, “above all,” he said, “the opportunities afforded, to men of every description, of producing their abilities and counsels to public opinion.” That description did not include slaves - those who “cultivated the soil,” including Pinckney’s own. Others in the north believed differently. 

Where Pinckney saw protections for slavery in the Constitution, many others, especially in the north, saw the seeds and promise of abolition.

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