On September 18 at 10:00 o’clock in the morning, the day after the Constitutional Convention adjourned, William Jackson boarded the stage to New York City. As secretary of the Convention, he was to present to the Confederation Congress the results of four months of intense, often rancorous, debate – an entirely new form of government embodied in a Constitution designed to emanate from “We the People.”
Jackson arrived in New York City the next day. The day after that, September 20, the Constitution was presented to Congress. Attendance in Congress had been sparse during the summer, simply because no fewer than ten of its thirty-three members had been in Philadelphia as delegates to the Convention, including John Langdon and Nicolas Gilman of New Hampshire, Nathaniel Gorham and Rufus King of Massachusetts, William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, James Madison of Virginia, William Blount of North Carolina, Pierce Butler of South Carolina, and William Few and William Pierce of Georgia.
Only four Convention delegates had arrived in New York by the 20th, but more were on hand on the 26th when the Congress began discussing what it should do, having been presented with a new Constitution accompanied by resolutions and the transmittal letter from Convention President George Washington. Although nearly a third of Congress was composed of men who had signed the Constitution, the same suspicions and parochial interests the Convention had wrestled with were surely to arise in Congress.
The day after the Convention adjourned, George Mason had immediately written to Richard Henry Lee, a friend, political ally, and one of Virginia’s representatives in Congress. Mason had refused to sign the Constitution and alerted Lee and others to its deficiencies, including the absence of a bill of rights.
Under the Articles of Confederation, still in effect, each State could send no less than two, nor more than seven members, but each State had one vote. Virginia had sent five members to Congress. Its delegates to the Convention had been divided (with Mason and Randolph refusing to sign), and its members in Congress were now also divided. Edward Carrington and Henry Lee (cousin to Richard Henry Lee) were inclined to support the Constitution while Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson took the opposite side. The fifth member, James Madison, was the initial architect of the Constitution and the decisive, fifth vote of the Virginia delegation in Congress. With Richard Henry Lee already on the offensive to derail the Constitution, Carrington wrote to Madison on September 24, urging him to hasten to New York, advising him that “the same schism which unfortunately happened in our State in Philadelphia, threatens us here also…Mr. R.H. Lee is forming propositions for essential alterations in the Constitution, which will, in effect, be to oppose it. Another, Mr. Grayson, dislikes it…”
The issues facing Congress were complicated. The Convention had not proposed “amendments” to the Articles, but instead had proposed an entirely different system, requiring assent of only nine States before going into effect. Amendments to the Articles required a unanimous vote of all thirteen States. Because the Convention was not actually a committee under the Articles, Congress probably had no authority over it. Moreover, the resolutions from the Convention accompanying the Constitution did not ask Congress to approve it, but simply transmit it to the States without explicit approval. Did Congress have the authority to amend, approve or disapprove of the Constitution? What was it to do?
When Madison and others urged Congress to explicitly endorse the Constitution, R. H. Lee was ready with a response. How could Congress approve it without deliberating it clause by clause, he asked? William Samuel Johnson, a member of the Convention, suggested that Congress could approve it as “on the whole” better than the current arrangement. Another Convention delegate, South Carolina’s Pierce Butler agreed, adding there would be anarchy and eminent danger to civil liberties if the Constitution were not ratified soon.
Carrington proposed that the States call conventions “as speedily as may be,” invoking Nathan Dane’s earlier observation that supporters of the Constitution “were extremely impatient to get it through Congress.” R.H. Lee was incensed, repeating his insistence that Congress thoroughly review the Constitution before deciding on whether or not to endorse it. Once again, Madison interjected. The Convention had adjourned, its work was finished, he asserted. If the Congress amended it, there would be two plans for the States to consider. Some States might choose one, other States choose the other.
R. H. Lee would not be deterred. To insist the Constitution be forwarded to the States without potential amendments from Congress would be like “presenting a hungry man fifty dishes and insisting he should eat all or none!” Nathaniel Gorham challenged him – just what amendments would he offer? R.H. Lee was ready with his list, prompted by Mason’s earlier objections: add a bill of rights, a privy council to advise the President, and jury trials in civil cases; eliminate the office of vice President; change representation in the Senate; and more. Of course, these issues and many others had been deliberated at great length during the Convention and delicate compromises had been devised to resolve them.
On September 28, Congress “resolved unanimously” to send the Constitution and accompanying documents to the State legislatures for submission “to a convention of delegations chosen in each State by the people thereof…” The debate in Congress, including R.H. Lee’s motions, was not made public until several months later. Writing to Mason on October 1, R.H. Lee lamented that Mason’s “prediction of what would happen in Congress was exactly verified – it was with us, as with you ‘[in Convention], this or nothing.”
In the meantime, events unfolding in Pennsylvania were ominous signs of what was to come. In a rush to become the first State to ratify the Constitution, its supporters were faced with anti-Constitution legislators who refused to attend the Assembly to prevent it from achieving a quorum and were forcibly “rounded up” and made to attend against their will.