Today’s session of the Constitutional Convention was similar to that of yesterday and the day before, and the day before that – a series of motions refining various elements of propositions put forth by committees of eleven or five and exhaustive debates too often focused on parochial concerns. Compromise remains elusive. The gap between the interests of small States and those of large States is wide. Few seem willing to bridge it. There is little agreement about what might arise from the west or how new States should be treated. The issue of slavery simmers below the surface, ready to boil over.
As tedious and frustrating as the process may seem to this small band of men enduring stifling heat and humidity, rendered even more unbearable by shuttered windows to assure privacy, new ideas are still being generated. Roger Sherman’s proposition that States be equally represented in the Senate is one of those ideas, as is Edmund Randolph’s notion to require a periodic census for calculating representation. The delegates’ determination to find compromise to model a new structure of government, and the urgent need to do so, are all that keep the Convention from dissolving.
Today, Gouverneur Morris proposed another new idea. Near the close of Monday’s session, Rufus King had declared that “taxation and representation ought to go together.” This was a familiar notion. After all, the rallying cry for independence from Great Britain was “no taxation without representation.” In this case, however, it is related directly to the number of representatives each State would have in the first branch of the government - and slavery.
Morris moved “to add to the clause empowering the legislature to vary representation… a ‘proviso that taxation shall be in proportion to representation.’” He revised it to include only “direct taxes,” those imposed directly on either land or people. If the southern States insist on counting slaves for representation purposes, Morris asserted, they should also be subjected to direct taxation in the same proportion. Pierce Butler, George Mason, and Gen. Pinckney, all southerners and slave owners, immediately supported the motion; it bolsters their demand for counting slaves. The motion passed, “provided always that direct taxation ought to be proportioned to representation.”
North Carolina’s William Davie finally spoke up. William Pierce’s “sketches” describe Davie as a lawyer of some eminence in his State. He is said to have a good classical education and is a gentleman of considerable literary talents. He was silent in the convention, but his opinion was always respected.” Today, the thirty-year old veteran and circuit lawyer was not silent, forcefully proclaiming “it is high time now to speak out,” accusing “some gentlemen” of attempting to “deprive the southern States of any share of representation for their blacks.” Echoing earlier threats by small State delegates that they would “never confederate” unless treated equally in at least one branch of the government, Davie bellowed, “North Carolina will never confederate on any terms that do not rate them at least as 3/5. If the eastern States mean therefore to exclude them altogether, the business is at an end.”
Morris reacted indignantly. “It has been said that it is high time to speak out,” he said, and “he would candidly do so.” He had come here “to form a compact for the good of America. He was ready to do so with all the States” and “hoped and believed that all would enter into such a compact. If they would not, he was ready to join with any States that would.” Because “any compact is to be voluntary, it is in vain for the eastern States to insist on what the southern States will never agree to. It is equally vain for the latter to require what the other States can never admit.” Morris closed by asking, “What can be desired by these States more than has been already proposed, that the legislature shall from time to time regulate representation according to population and wealth?”
Gen. Pinckney was quick with a response. He “desired that the rule of wealth should be ascertained and not left to the pleasure of the legislature, and that property in slaves should not be exposed to danger under a government instituted to protect property.” In short, he believes the main purpose of government is to protect property. Slaves are property and thus must be protected by government. This sentiment is by no means shared by all of the delegates, many of whom are abolitionists. When the Convention will face squarely the “peculiar institution” is only a matter of time, but it was not addressed today.
Randolph then revisited the idea of a census, this time proposing it “be taken within two years of the first meeting of the national legislature and one every ___ years afterward.” Gen. Pinckney’s motion to insert “six years instead of two” passed 5 – 4 – 1, with no debate. The question for filling the blank for a periodic census passed just as quickly. “Ten years” received only two negatives votes, Connecticut, and New Jersey.
With little discussion, the Convention then rejected by a vote of 2 – 8 Charles Pinckney’s motion “rating blacks as equal to whites instead of three-fifths.” Surprisingly, Dr. Johnson broke with his Connecticut colleagues and voted “yes” with South Carolina and Georgia.
Yesterday, the Convention unanimously rejected Randolph’s motion covering these subjects, even after having approved amendments to it. Late this afternoon, after further debate and more amendments, the motion was finally approved by a narrow vote of 6 – 2 – 2. The motion was “on the question of the whole proposition (as proportioning representation to direct taxation and both to the white and 3/5 of black inhabitants, and requiring a census within six years, and within every ten years afterwards.” Whether wealth will be added to population as a factor in determining representation is still unsettled.
History will tell us that William Richardson Davie sponsored legislation that chartered the University of North Carolina and bears the title “Father of the University.” In McCorkle Place on the campus at Chapel Hill is a tulip poplar tree called “the Davie Poplar.” Legends abound about how the tree got its name, but it cannot be denied that the tree is now between 300 and 375 years old. On the university’s bicentennial, 100 seedlings from the tree were given to 100 children and planted across the States’ 100 counties.