dissenters had given up, and everyone must have thought that the issue was at last settled.
That afternoon, on July 17, the delegates broke early. A group of them, led by Washington, visited Gray’s Ferry, where one could observe the exotic plants of Bartram’s Garden, drink tea, or fish in the Schuylkill.105 The leafy walks may have prompted reflection about the office Washington soon would hold, for two days later, on July 19, the delegates suddenly reversed themselves. On a motion by Gouverneur Morris, they unanimously agreed to reconsider the method of installing a president.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS—THE MAN OF THE CONVENTION
Morris was a representative of the rising merchant class and a member of the court party. He was as fearful of democracy as any delegate, but now he sought to persuade country party nationalists to support the democratic election of presidents. What Morris wanted was a president who, clothed with the authority conferred by a popular election, would strengthen the central government.106 That was not an argument that would appeal to many delegates, however. Ingeniously, Morris argued that the lower classes needed a tribune of the people, and this could only be the president. Congress would come to represent the rich and powerful, and if it could appoint the president, “legislative tyranny” would ensue. What was needed was a separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. “If the Legislature elect,” said Morris, “it will be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction.”107
Morris had cleverly sought to appeal to several constituencies among the delegates. The call for a tribune of the people would appeal to the pro-debtor crowd, who wanted a new Tribune Gracchus to redistribute wealth. Morris also sought to enlist the support of country party members with the buzzwords of intrigue and cabal. And the reference to congressional tyranny would appeal to states’-rights supporters, notably Elbridge Gerry, who had expressed fear of corrupt bargains if the legislature appointed the president.108 Finally, Morris sought to appeal to that man of theory, James Madison, who Morris knew would hear echoes of Montesquieu in an argument for separation of powers.
The two men had known each other for some years. They did not overlap in the Continental Congress, but both were in Philadelphia in the early 1780s. For the first month of the Convention they saw little of each other. Though he was present at its start, Morris had left after a few days, not returning until July 2, when he wasted no time in making up for his absence by launching into a patronizing speech in favor of a Senate composed of American aristocrats.109 In his brashness, he had failed to take the measure of the delegates, and Madison was especially annoyed. On July 11 he admonished Morris for continually insisting on the “political depravity of men, and the necessity of checking one vice and interest” against another.110 It wasn’t so much what Morris had said, however, as the way he had said it. Madison didn’t think men were angels, but Morris had spoken like a brassy New Yorker, and this had irritated the Virginian.
Morris was everything Madison was not. The New Yorker was tall, confident, ebullient, and witty. He had lost a leg, and his right arm was withered, but this scarcely slowed him down. By contrast, Madison was a hypochondriac who outlived every other member of the Convention. He was especially shy with women, while Morris enjoyed a remarkably successful career as a rake. While the story that Morris owed his peg leg to a jump from a window to escape a jealous husband is probably apocryphal, we do know something of his many affairs, thanks to his candid diaries and correspondence. The letters that Mme Chaumont wrote to him are too heated to be quoted, sniffed a prim Morris biographer.111 More discreetly still, Morris’s granddaughter complained of the lady’s “ceaseless annoyances.”112 With a touch of envy, a French diplomat described him as “sans moeurs, et, si l’on en croit ses ennemis, sans principes.”113
At the Convention Morris was the master of the strategic compromise, the adroit suggestion, the art of the deal. A Georgia delegate described him as:
one of those Genius’s in whom every species of talents combine to render him conspicuous and flourishing in public debate:—He winds through all the mazes of rhetoric, and throws around him such a glare that he charms, captivates, and leads away all the senses of all who hear him. 114
As for Madison, the Georgian recalled his scholarship, industry, sweet temper, and “great modesty.”115
This was a trying time for Madison. When he heard of the New Jersey Plan, he had felt “serious anxiety.”116 Before the Connecticut Compromise of July 16, he and the other delegates had feared that the Convention might end in failure, and tempers had run high. Within a few days, however, the crisis had passed, and Madison seems to have made up his differences with Morris. Years later Madison remembered the New Yorker not unfondly. “To the brilliancy of his genius, [Morris] added, what is too rare, a candid surrender of his opinions, when the lights of discussion satisfied him, that they had been too hastily formed, and a readiness to aid in making the best of measures in which he had been overruled.”117 Evidently Morris had seen the need to flatter Madison, who was only too happy to receive the attention of his more sophisticated colleague.
At the same time, Morris brought Madison around to the idea of a popularly elected president. When he arrived in Philadelphia Madison had subscribed to Hume’s theory of filtration, with its appointed executive, but without investing the deepest thought or feeling on the subject. A month before the Convention he confessed his uncertainties to Edmund Randolph. “A national Executive will also be necessary. I have scarcely ventured to form my own opinion yet, either of the manner in which it ought to be constituted, or of the authorities with which it ought to be clothed.”118 It was now prudent to drop Hume’s filtration theory, but Madison needed a new theory to do so; and that was what Morris handed him, by invoking the separation of powers. At some level Madison must have recognized, with the Pennsylvanians, that the nationalist cause he supported would be served by a powerful president, one who could stand up to the states as American presidents have done since then. Moreover, a filtration scheme in which Congress appointed the president would make less sense to a nationalist if state-appointed senators would assist in the filtering. However, practical considerations were little more than an empty breeze to Madison, who yearned for the rock of a good hard theory. Happily, he was a supple theorist, who could amend his theories when the need arose.119
The penny, so carefully inserted by Morris, now dropped. Madison had authored the Virginia Plan’s proposal for a congressionally appointed president, but after listening to Morris he did a nimble volte-face. As a nationalist, Madison was dismayed by the Connecticut Compromise and senators appointed by state legislatures, and as a nationalist he was now brought around to the idea of a popularly elected president. Like Morris, he recognized that a president so elected would strengthen the national government, and like Morris he veiled his argument in separationist, rather than nationalist, terms: A separation of powers between legislative, executive, and judicial powers was essential to preserve liberty, and the three branches could be separate only if they were independent of each other. “A dependence of the Executive on the Legislature, would render it the Executor as well as the maker of laws; & then according to the observation of Montesquieu, tyrannical laws may be made that they may be executed in a tyrannical manner.”120
Morris had consolidated the nationalist faction at the Convention. Until that point the nationalists had differed among themselves about democratic elections and the presidency. Some had supported the congressionally appointed president of the Virginia Plan, others wanted a president elected by the people. Now the nationalists would present a united front in favor of a popularly elected president.
A FINAL COMPROMISE
The nationalists were not a majority, however, and Morris and his allies moved cautiously. On July 19, Connecticut’s Oliver Ellsworth and Delaware’s Jacob Broom proposed that the president be appointed by electors.
