Richard Beeman – Plain, Honest Men
The leaders of the Revolutionary Era were men of their generation, not men of the 21st century. They were the products of a particular place and moment of the late 18th century. The production of our constitution was highly improbable. P. xi
Americans argued about the interpretation of their constitution from the beginning, giving the lie to those who point to “original intent” as the proper interpreting mechanism of our founding document. P. xiii
The three indispensable men of the convention were Washington, Madison, and Franklin. P. 40
The thing that has always puzzled me most about the Constitutional Convention is how a convention called for the express purpose of amending the Articles of Confederation instead ended up with a completely new charter that we call our Constitution. Beeman’s first explanation is that the first delegates to assemble in Philadelphia before the convention formally got underway were the delegates from Virginia and Pennsylvania. These delegates, led by James Madison and Gouverneur Morris, wanted a stronger national government and with Madison’s preparation beforehand, hatched what came to be called The Virginia Plan, whose recommendations were predicated on a new constitution totally replacing the Articles. And so it was the Virginia Plan which first dominated discussion when the convention opened May 25, 1787. Chapter 3
Twenty-five of the 55 men who attended this convention owned slaves. Most of them had one or more slaves with them at the convention. P. 67
The convention was completely secret. The Constitution would never have happened if the meetings had been public. P. 83
"Many of the delegates were stunned by the revolutionary character of the proposal (The Virginia Plan as presented by Edmund Randolph) so boldly laid before them. They had come to Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation and were now being asked to create an entirely new kind of government. The Articles of Confederation had created 'federal' government, in the common understanding of that term. The resolutions presented by Randolph repeatedly used the world 'national' rather than 'federal' to describe the various brances of the proposed government, and their insistence that the powers of this government were superior to those of the states left no doubt of their intention." P. 91.
There was Shays Rebellion that was on the minds of the nationalist minded delegates but it was the excess of democracy in the states---the perceived irresponsibility of the state legislatures---that was paramount in their minds. Chapter 5
"There it was---the first explicit proposal to scrap the Articles of Confederation and substitute in its place a supreme national government. The strategy of the Virginia Plan's advocates was to get the delegates to accept the basic priciple of a 'supreme national government' before getting bogged down in the details of the plan itself. P. 100
"And thus on the third full day of business the Convention rejected the princple of federalism on which the American republic had been founded and endorsed in its place the notion of a supreme national government. P. 102
We the people or we the states? It seems that our Constitution has some of the both, but the preamble does start with "we the people." Liberals prefer we the people whereas conservatives prefer we the states. P. 105
The delegates had deep misgivings about democracy though they considered themselves republican in that they stood solidly against hereditary monarchy and in favor of some kind representative government. Their democracy had to be mediated. They would debate the proper place of elitists vs. the proper role of the people. P. 123
"As the delegaes took their seats at ten o'clock on the unseasonably cool and cloudy June 1 morning, Madison and his nationalist allies remained in control of the agenda. P. 125
Without George Washington we might have had a parlimentary rather than a presidential system of government. P. 129
The counterattack to the Virginia Plan led by William Patterson could be called The New Jersey Plan, but it ultimately failed. P. 144
The Constitution is remarkably secular. P. 179
. . . The principle division of interests within the country, he (Madison) observed wold never lie between the large and small states, but between the Northern and Southern based who did or did not have slaves. P. 183
George Washington did not miss a single session of the convention. He rightly believed that the fate of the 13 colonies depended on what happened at this meeting in Philadelphia, and that success or failure depended mostly on him. It seems to me that this alone made him a great man. P. 193
Discussions of slavery at the Convention including the three-fifths compromise were completely devoid of moral considerations. P. 213
“. . . while our Founding Fathers were for the most part farseeing men living in an age of Enlightenment, the year in which they carried out their deliberations, 1787, was more closely linked in time to 1692---the year of the Salem witchcraft trials and executions in Massachusetts---than it is to our own era.” P. 227
Fueled by his deep mistrust of misconduct by state legislatures, Madison fought to the bitter end for congressional veto of state laws, but the convention, wisely, decisively rejected congressional veto over state legislatures. P. 229
The convention rejected direct election of the chief executive by a vote of 9 to 1. P. 232
The debates can give ammunition to those who favor a “living constitution” (as I do) as well as those who favor “original intent,” but the facts far more strongly support the former interpretation. P. 269-70
The insertion of the “necessary and proper clause” most likely by James Wilson came to assume great importance in constitutional history. P. 274
Led by Benjamin Franklin, the convention voted down a proposal to impose a property requirement for voting. P. 280
Slavery is the paradox at the nation’s core. Attention was diverted from this paradox by the economic interests of slaveholders and those Americans who benefited from slavery even if they were not slaveholders themselves, and by the belief that Africans were fundamentally inferior human beings, people so culturally and physically different from white people that they could never function responsibly as equal citizens in a free republic. P. 314
The racial consensus of the times---belief in the inherent inferiority of people who were different whether blacks or Indians---made it highly unlikely that the Philadelphia delegates would move decisively to abolish slavery. P. 314
The interest of protecting slavery came mainly from the South Carolina and Georgia delegates. P. 315
There WERE some Americans, like Luther Martin, who were deeply disturbed by the inherent contradictions of America’s commitment to liberty on the one hand, and the protection of slavery on the other hand. P. 320
For sure the Founders who owned slaves and yet opposed slavery theoretically were hypocrites; yet the complicating factor is these men could not imagine a society with free blacks. They could not imagine Africans as equal citizens. So what to do? P. 323
The fugitive slave provision is in Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph 3. P. 350
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