The Life of John Marshall, Volume 1: Frontiersman, soldier, lawmaker, 1755-1788

by Albert J. Beveridge

Although seven months had elapsed since the Federal Convention had finished its work, there was, nevertheless, practically no accurate knowledge among the people of the various parts of the "New Plan" of government. Even some members of the Virginia State Convention had never seen a copy of the Constitution until they arrived in Richmond to deliberate upon it and decide its fate.[987] Some of the most inquiring men of this historic body had not read a serious or convincing argument for it or against it.[988] "The greater part of the members of the [Virginia] convention will go to the meeting without information on the subject," wrote Nicholas to Madison immediately after the election of delegates.[989]

One general idea, however, had percolated through the distances and difficulties of communication to the uninformed minds of the people—the idea that the new Constitution would form a strong, consolidated National Government, superior to and dominant over the State Governments; a National Sovereignty overawing State Sovereignties, dangerous to if not entirely destructive of the latter; a general and powerful authority beyond the people's reach, which would enforce contracts, collect debts, impose taxes; above all, a bayonet-enforced rule from a distant point, that would imperil and perhaps abolish "liberty."[990]

So a decided majority of the people of Virginia were against the proposed fundamental law;[991] for, as in other parts of the country, few of Virginia's masses wanted anything stronger than the weak and ineffective Government of the State and as little even of that as possible. Some were "opposed to any system, was it even sent from heaven, which tends to confirm the union of the States."[992] Madison's father reported the Baptists to be "generally opposed to it"; and the planters who went to Richmond to sell their tobacco had returned foes of the "new plan" and had spread the uprising against it among others "who are no better acquainted with the necessity of adopting it than they themselves."[993] At first the friends of the Constitution deceived themselves into thinking that the work of the Philadelphia Convention met with approval in Virginia; but they soon found that "the tide next took a sudden and strong turn in the opposite direction."[994] Henry wrote to Lamb that "Four-fifths of our inhabitants are opposed to the new scheme of government"; and he added that south of the James River "I am confident nine-tenths are opposed to it."[995]

That keen and ever-watchful merchant, Minton Collins, thus reported to the head of his commercial house in Philadelphia: "The New Federal Constitution will meet with much opposition in this State [Virginia] for many pretended patriots has taken a great deal of pains to poison the minds of the people against it.... There are two Classes here who oppose it, the one is those who have power & are unwilling to part with an atom of it, & the others are the people who owe a great deal of money, and are very unwilling to pay, as they are afraid this Constitution will make them Honest Men in spite of their teeth."[996]

And now the hostile forces are to meet in final and decisive conflict. Now, at last, the new Constitution is to be really debated; and debated openly before the people and the world. For the first time, too, it is to be opposed in argument by men of the highest order in ability, character, and standing—men who cannot be hurried, or bullied, or shaken, or bought. The debates in the Virginia Convention of 1788 are the only masterful discussions on both sides of the controversy that ever took place.

While the defense of the Constitution had been very able in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts (and later in New York was to be most brilliant), the attack upon it in the Virginia Convention was nowhere equaled or approached in power, learning, and dignity. Extravagant as the assertion appears, it nevertheless is true that the Virginia contest was the only real debate over the whole Constitution. It far surpassed, especially in presenting the reasons against the Constitution, the discussion in the Federal Convention itself, in weight of argument and attractiveness of presentation, as well as in the ability and distinction of the debaters.

The general Federal Convention that framed the Constitution at Philadelphia was a secret body; and the greatest pains were taken that no part of its proceedings should get to the public until the Constitution itself was reported to Congress. The Journals were confided to the care of Washington and were not made public until many years after our present Government was established. The framers of the Constitution ignored the purposes for which they were delegated; they acted without any authority whatever; and the document, which the warring factions finally evolved from their quarrels and dissensions, was revolutionary.[997] This capital fact requires iteration, for it is essential to an understanding of the desperate struggle to secure the ratification of that then unpopular instrument.

"Not one legislature in the United States had the most distant idea when they first appointed members for a [Federal] convention, entirely commercial ... that they would without any warrant from their constituents, presume on so bold and daring a stride," truthfully writes the excitable Gerry of Massachusetts in his bombastic denunciation of "the fraudulent usurpation at Philadelphia."[998] The more reliable Melancton Smith of New York testifies that "previous to the meeting of the Convention the subject of a new form of government had been little thought of and scarcely written upon at all.... The idea of a government similar to" the Constitution "never entered the minds of the legislatures who appointed the Convention and of but very few of the members who composed it, until they had assembled and heard it proposed in that body."[999]

"Had the idea of a total change [from the Confederation] been started," asserts the trustworthy Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, "probably no state would have appointed members to the Convention.... Probably not one man in ten thousand in the United States ... had an idea that the old ship [Confederation] was to be destroyed. Pennsylvania appointed principally those men who are esteemed aristocratical.... Other States ... chose men principally connected with commerce and the judicial department." Even so, says Lee, "the non-attendance of eight or nine men" made the Constitution possible. "We must recollect, how disproportionately the democratic and aristocratic parts of the community were represented" in this body.[1000]

This "child of fortune,"[1001] as Washington called the Constitution, had been ratified with haste and little or no discussion by Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Georgia. The principal men in the first three Commonwealths felt that the Constitution gave those States large commercial advantages and even greater political consequence;[1002] and Georgia, with so small a population as to be almost negligible, felt the need of some strong Government to defend her settlers against the Indians. It is doubtful whether many of the people of these four States had read the Constitution or had heard much about it, except that, in a general way, they were to be better off under the new than under the old arrangement. Their ratification carried no weight other than to make up four of the nine States necessary to set the new system in motion.