Who Wrote the Constitution?
In the spring and summer of 1787, a contingent of lawyers, businessmen, and other highly regarded state representatives met at the Pennsylvania State House to fine-tune the parameters of the shaky federal government that was established by the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first stab at a framework for government. Known as the Constitutional Convention, this meeting was perhaps the most momentous occasion in the short history of the United States following the end of the Revolutionary War.
Even in the absence of founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who were serving ambassadorships in Europe, the gathering boasted a formidable collection of the nation’s leaders, including James Madison of Virginia, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and the elderly but still razor-sharp Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania.
As described in The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution, many of the 55 delegates carried with them a raft of ideas and some combination of deft oratory skills and a forceful personality to push others to action. As such, there was no shortage of passionate speeches and threats issued over clashing values, although it proved to be more of a challenge to find calmer voices willing to nudge the rest toward compromise, and an additional challenge to pull the oft-debated and revised proposals into a document with language that would stand the test of time.
James Madison’s “Virginia Plan”
Four days after the Constitutional Convention officially commenced on May 25, 1787, Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph presented an outline of 15 draft resolutions under what became known as the “Virginia Plan.” Largely authored by Madison, the plan proposed a three-branch federal government and two-house legislature, a system that heavily concentrated power in the latter and gave the national government the ability to veto state laws.
The ambitious Virginia Plan touched off a series of debates within the convention, starting with how it represented a clean break from — as opposed to a means for improving — the system laid out by the Articles of Confederation. Even more contentious were the debates over how the states would be represented in Congress, and who had the power to choose the chief executive. Although an alliance of the smaller U.S. states later proposed a system that hewed closer to the Articles of Confederation, known as the “New Jersey Plan,” the delegates ultimately rejected this version when the two plans were put to a vote in mid-July.
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The First Draft
Heading into an 11-day recess in late July, the delegates assigned the job of transcribing the first draft of the Constitution to a group known as the Committee of Detail, consisting of Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, Edmund Randolph of Virginia, and Chairman John Rutledge of South Carolina. The committee largely worked off the Virginia Plan, while also considering a separate draft previously completed by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, as well as portions of the Articles of Confederation and various state constitutions.
With Randolph providing an initial outline before Wilson delivered a polished revision, the five-person committee tackled the difficult task of balancing state and federal powers, even as they took the bold step of introducing provisions that hadn't been formally discussed at the convention. Randolph's outline, for example, enumerated 18 specific powers accorded to Congress, while Wilson's version ensured that state constitutions could not supersede federal law.
While the other delegates accepted most of the 23 articles delivered by the Committee of Detail, a few ideas spurred additional rounds of heated rhetoric. Among them was a provision that attempted to encode indefinite protection of the slave trade; while this never came to fruition, it exposed the divide between the convention’s plantation owners and abolitionists, and rekindled the argument over how the Southern population of enslaved people affected representation in Congress.
The Man Who Wrote Most of the Final Language
After each of the 23 articles had finally been reviewed, a new five-person Committee of Style was tasked with incorporating the various resolutions that came out of the conventions into something close to a final product.
Along with Chairman William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut and Rufus King of Massachusetts, the committee was marked by the notable presences of Madison, whose extensive work on creating and promoting this document earned him the moniker "Father of the Constitution," and New York's Alexander Hamilton, who missed much of the convention but was nonetheless admired for his formidable intellect.
Yet it was Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania who wound up with the job of putting pen to paper, a weighty responsibility awarded on the basis of his writing talents, his ability to work quickly, and a willingness to accept the decisions of his colleagues even if they differed from his own impassioned views.
Proving up to the task on all fronts, Morris streamlined the Committee of Detail's 23 articles into a concise list of seven over the course of about four days. He also wrote the celebrated preamble to the Constitution ("We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union..."), while largely avoiding the temptation of adding new material at this late stage of the game, save for one clause that prevented states from interfering with private contracts.
The First Signatures
Presented to the rest of the delegates on September 12, 1787, Morris' draft underwent further discussion but minimal changes over the next few days. The final fix came courtesy of the Constitutional Convention’s normally quiet president, George Washington, who sought one final tweak to the never-ending issue of congressional representation. Once the final draft was done, the official job of physically writing out the Constitution was undertaken by Jacob Shallus, assistant clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, who carefully engrossed nearly 4,500 words across four sheets of parchment.
On September 17, 38 delegates scribbled their signatures on the freshly printed Constitution (with George Read signing for fellow Delawarian John Dickinson, who could not attend the signing ceremony due to illness). Although the launch of the new-and-improved federal government was not yet complete — nine states still needed to ratify the Constitution, with the Madison-authored Bill of Rights soon to follow — the tangible document stood as proof of the cooler heads that somehow shepherded four months of wildly divergent and oft-incongruent ideas into the law of the land.
