And then there was Madison, a court party nationalist whose filtration principle nevertheless led him to propose a congressionally appointed president. How he and country party nationalists such as Washington were led to support the method of electing presidents stipulated in Article II of the Constitution, and what they understood this to mean, is one of the greatest and least understood dramas of the Convention, and of American government.
JAMES WILSON’S MAN OF THE PEOPLE
The delegates came from very different backgrounds. Some were conservative, some not; some were rich, some not. Surprisingly, it was the conservative or wealthy delegates—Hamilton, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and John Dickinson—who wanted a president elected by the people; the more republican delegates, whom one would have expected to be most sympathetic to popular elections—Roger Sherman, George Mason, and John Rutledge—sought an appointed executive. As Hamilton observed, “the members most tenacious of republicanism . . . were as loud as any in declaiming against the vices of democracy.”82
James Wilson had most cause to fear the “excesses of democracy,” after the “Battle of Fort Wilson.” Like Hamilton, Wilson wanted a strong central government; unlike Hamilton, Wilson sincerely believed in popular sovereignty, and subscribed to that most benign of legal fictions, the idea that in America, sovereignty vests in the people.83 Of all the delegates, he came closest to championing the present constitutional regime, one with a popular election of members of both houses of Congress, as well as the president. He had signed the Declaration of Independence and served on the Supreme Court, but deserves to be remembered principally for his role at the Convention.84
What Wilson had recognized, before anyone else, was how a democratically elected president would strengthen the strong national government he yearned to see. An elected president would be the only member of the government chosen by all the people of the United States, and would provide the leadership to resist parochial parties from different states. That was not a politic thing to say before the defenders of states’ rights at the Convention, but Wilson could be more candid at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention later that year. The president, he said, would be “THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE,” and as such would “consider himself as not particularly interested for any [one part of the United States], but will watch over the whole with paternal care and affection.”85
Wilson recognized that, for most delegates, a direct election of the president was a bridge too far. Nevertheless, the idea of democracy might be made more palatable if presidential electors were interposed between the president and the people; what Wilson proposed was the electoral college: Voters would elect members of the college, who would then choose the president. This was a clever method of addressing the fears of democracy, since it suggested that the electors might exercise an independent judgment if the voters chose poorly. However, Wilson’s motion was defeated 7 to 2 in roll call 11,86 with only Pennsylvania and Maryland supporting it. The delegates then voted 8 to 2 for a president appointed by the legislature.87 Wilson had failed, but over the course of the Convention he and his allies would create a minority coalition of nationalists who supported a strong presidency.88
THE STATES’-RIGHTS DELEGATES COUNTERATTACK
A second group of delegates, led by Elbridge Gerry, opposed the Virginia Plan’s proposal of a congressionally appointed president. These were states’-rights supporters who were troubled by the degree of centralization implicit in both Wilson’s democratically elected president and Madison’s congressionally appointed president, and who wanted the states to appoint the president.89 A congressional appointment, argued Gerry, would lead to “corruption.”90 For country party members, this was a code word for pampered courtiers trading favors at the feet of a monarch, and Gerry said the Virginia Plan would result in the same kind of underhanded deals between the president and legislators. A state-appointed presidency, Gerry argued, would give us better presidents than those whom the people would elect, in keeping with Madison’s filtration principle.
Very early in the Convention the states’-rights delegates watered down the Virginia Plan, with a unanimous vote on June 7 for a Senate appointed by state legislatures.91 This had been proposed by John Dickinson as a means of giving states a voice in the federal government. This was also, he said, an application of Madison’s filtration theory, since state legislatures could be expected to choose more wisely than voters in a popular election. Only Madison, still wedded to the Virginia Plan, spoke against this. The system of state legislatures appointing the Senate continued until 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment instituted the popular election of senators. Dickinson had wanted to empower the states; by reversing his system of appointment, the Seventeenth Amendment is thought to have shifted power from the states to the federal government.92
The small-state delegates pressed their advantage a week later, when William Paterson presented the New Jersey Plan to the delegates.93 The Virginians had caucused behind the scenes to produce a plan that shocked the small-state delegates, who thought it would result in an excessively strong national government. In response, the small-state delegates had caucused privately too, to produce a rival scheme of government. The New Jersey Plan was a bombshell. It modified the Articles of Confederation, but unlike the Virginia Plan did not junk them. Congress would have a taxing power, but would continue as a unicameral house, with each state given a single vote. When Paterson introduced his plan, John Dickinson turned to Madison and said, “you see the consequence of pushing things too far.”94 There were now two radically different plans on the floor, and the debate between them would consume the deliberations and passions of the delegates for the next month.
To resolve the crisis, on July 2 the delegates appointed a Committee of Eleven, with one member from each state in attendance at the time, to settle on a compromise. At Franklin’s suggestion, the committee devised the plan of representation now found in the Constitution: representation by population in the House of Representatives, and equal representation for states in the Senate. The delegates had previously agreed that state legislatures should appoint congressional senators; now they agreed that small states should have the same representation as large states in the Senate. Delegates from the larger states objected, but were outvoted on July 7;95 on July 16, the Convention ratified the committee’s entire proposal.96 This came to be called the Connecticut Compromise, but the label is misleading, for it was less a compromise than a defeat for nationalists from the large states.
The large-state delegates met the morning of July 17 to see whether their plans for a Senate appointed by the House of Representatives might be salvaged, but decided that the game was lost.97 When the Framers convened that day, the small-state delegates returned to the attack, this time against another of Madison’s pet ideas, a congressional veto over state laws. On Madison’s extended republic theory, the national government would be less prone to factions and interest-group inefficiencies than state governments; the Virginia Plan’s Resolution Six would therefore have given Congress the power to “negative,” or veto, state laws that it thought contravened the Constitution.98 The delegates had voted this down once, on June 8;99 but lest any doubt remain, they rejected it again on July 17.100
Until then there had been broad agreement that the president should be appointed by Congress. If anything, the New Jersey Plan tilted in the direction of parliamentary governance, since it reopened the question of whether there should be more than one president at a time, and would have permitted Congress to remove the president at the request of a majority of state governors.101 Now, however, the Pennsylvanians counterattacked; Gouverneur Morris moved that the president be elected by popular suffrage. But when it came to a vote, only Pennsylvania supported the resolution.102 Maryland’s Luther Martin then proposed that the president be chosen by electors appointed by state legislatures, but delegates were still wedded to appointment by Congress, and voted 8 to 2 against, with only Delaware and Maryland in favor.103 The delegates finally voted
