Politically Incorrect Guide To The Constitution (Politically Incorrect Guides) (8 page)

Turning to the claim that the Constitution was intended to "annihilate"
the state governments, Wilson said this was impossible, given that state
legislatures were to choose the senators, the people of the several states
were to elect the representatives, and electors selected in a fashion chosen by each state legislature were to choose the president.

Other Federalists affirmed Wilson's analysis. In Massachusetts,
William Cushing-another future Supreme Court justice-said much the
same (that the federal government would have only the powers it was
"expressly granted" through the Constitution) in a speech written for his
state's ratification convention. In South Carolina, ratification opponents worried that
the proposed constitution might threaten the
institution of slavery. But General Charles
Cotesworth Pinckney, a Philadelphia Convention delegate and future Federalist presidential nominee, assured his fellow
Carolinians that "it is admitted, on all
hands, that the general government has no
powers but what are expressly granted by
the constitution, and that all rights not
expressed were reserved by the several
states."

Pennsylvania and South Carolina Federalists achieved crushing victories in those states'
ratification conventions. In Massachusetts, Federalists needed to persuade popular governor John Hancock to support
ratification. To do so, they promised that they would ask the first federal Congress to amend the Constitution to include a bill of rights. (Even with that
concession, Massachusetts approved the Constitution by only a narrow margin.)

Federalists and
Anti-Federalists

The Federalists generally were not federalist, but nationalist.

Anti-Federalists (they were actually federalist, and they called themselves Republicans) were not opposed to strengthening
the federal government; they merely
wanted to amend the Constitution before
ratifying it.

The pivotal state, however, was the largest, most populous state: Virginia. Virginia had provided far more than its share of leaders to the Revolution, the Philadelphia Convention had been presided over by George
Washington, and James Madison had provided the template for much of
the Convention's discussion. Once the Convention finished its work, Virginians Edmund Randolph and George Mason became the initial leaders
of the Anti-Federalist campaign.

If Virginia (which still included West Virginia and Kentucky) did not
ratify the Constitution, the new Union would be cut in half. Perhaps more
important, a Republican victory in Virginia would prevent George Washington from serving as the first president-and the Constitution's executive branch had been drafted with him in mind, as the one chief executive
the states would trust. Such was Washington's prestige that it was
assumed that once he had set the standard for proper republican presidential behavior, it would bind all his successors.

The stakes in Virginia's summer 1788 Richmond Ratification Convention
approached the stratosphere. A Republican victory would mean the
defeat of the Constitution, as North Carolina and Rhode Island already
had gone on record in opposition and New York stood poised to follow
the Old Dominion's example.

Unlike those of other states, Virginia's political elite split right down
the middle on ratification. George Mason, former congressional president
Richard Henry Lee, future U.S. president James Monroe, and the domi nant figure in the General Assembly, Patrick Henry, led the opponents;
George Washington, James Madison, and veteran lawyer, judge, and
politician Edmund Pendleton, along with Madison's lieutenant George
Nicholas, favored ratification.

The Republicans, led by Mason, argued that the Constitution's grants
of power to the new federal Congress and judiciary were too ill defined
(and thus that the new institutions were apt to claim more authority than
the people intended) and that any new constitution required a bill of
rights. The Federalists argued the reverse.

Governor Edmund Randolph-who had supported the Virginia Plan
and then opposed the Convention draft-announced early in the Richmond debates that while he considered the Constitution imperfect, and
that it needed to be amended before it was approved, he no longer
believed that option to be available. Eight of the nine states whose assent
was needed to put the Constitution into effect had already ratified. The
issue now, he insisted, was whether Virginia would be part of the Union.
He, for one, said yes.

Patrick Henry mocked Randolph's newfound support of ratification
and implied at one point that Randolph's motives were impure (and it
seems that Randolph sent a second to Henry's camp to sound him out
regarding a duel).

What a Patriot Said

"We have laid our new Government upon a broad Foundation, and have endeavoured to provide the most effectual Securities for the essential Rights of human
nature."

George Mason on the Virginia Constitution and Declaration of Rights of 1776, in a
personal letter, October 2, 1778

Surprisingly, Randolph (whom George
Mason now called "Young Arnold" after
Revolutionary War traitor Benedict Arnold)
became the chief spokesman for ratification.
He was chosen for the same reason he had
been selected to present the Virginia Plan in
Philadelphia: he was tall, handsome, and
articulate, the very picture of a Virginia blue
blood. The Randolphs were Virginia's leading family, including in their numbers
Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, while
the brains behind the ratification operation,
James Madison, was short, sickly, and-in
debate-often inaudible. Randolph's explication of the text carried great weight.

The other delegates listened intently, then, when Governor Randolph
explained that the new federal government need not be feared so much
as Henry wanted it to be. No powers were being granted to the new Congress by implication, Randolph held. The new government would have
only the powers it was "expressly delegated."

Federalists realized, however, that they had not persuaded a clear
majority of delegates. Like their fellows in the Massachusetts Convention,
they sought to persuade the unpersuaded with expedients they would not
otherwise have adopted. They suggested, for instance, that Virginia could
expressly state that it was approving the Constitution with the understanding that the rights of conscience and of the press were reserved free
of federal interference. Moreover, they said, Virginia could reserve a right
to reclaim its delegated authority if the federal government exceeded that
which was given it through the Constitution. These positions would be
included in Virginia's instrument of ratification, which established the
terms by which the state approved the Constitution.

Federalists Who Lived Up
to Their Name

Leading Federalists in several states
(New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,
South Carolina, and Virginia) insisted that
the new government would have only
the powers "expressly delegated" to iteven though they might have preferred
otherwise.

As the Federalists explained matters, the Constitution amounted to a
compact, and Virginia was a party to it. In George Nicholas's words, "If
thirteen individuals are about to make a contract, and one agrees to it, but
at the same time declares that he understands its meaning, signification
and intent to be, what the words of the contract plainly and obviously
denote; that it is not to be construed so as to impose any supplementary
condition upon him, and that he is to be exonerated from it, whensoever
any such imposition shall be attempted-I ask whether in this case, these
conditions on which he assented to it, would not be binding on the other
twelve? In like manner these conditions will be binding on Congress.
They can exercise no power that is not expressly granted them." (Emphasis added)

James Madison, too clever by half, wrote to a friend to say that this was
all verbiage, that it would not really change anything. To Madison's mind,
it was, in modern language, a lie: "The plan meditated by the friends [of]
the Constitution," Madison said, "is to preface the ratification with some
plain & general truths that can not affect the validity of the Act," along
with proposed subsequent amendments. Were the rubes persuaded? Randolph privately said that five votes had been added to the Federalist column by his and Nicholas's explanation of the Constitution. In the end,
the Richmond Convention ratified by a ten-vote margin-precisely the
one Randolph counted. Madison conceded later that the RandolphNicholas explanation had been decisive.

Very soon, Virginia's instrument of ratification would be elevated by
Virginia's moderate Federalists and Republicans into the first article of
the Jeffersonian faith.

So you might well ask, if you learned about the Constitution in college,
or by reading the opinions of Supreme Court justices (Chief Justice John Marshall and Associate Justice Joseph Story were early proponents), or if
you read some self-styled conservatives (who should know better) whose
journalism or books treat The Federalist as political scripture.

The short answer is that The Federalist did not have much to do with
the ratification of the Constitution in New York or anywhere else. Far
from shaping the ratification debate throughout the United States, the
arguments outlined in the Publius essays were unknown to virtually
everyone outside the range of the New York papers. Virginia was the
tenth state to ratify the Constitution, and its ratification convention was
already meeting when the final Federalist essay first appeared in a New
York newspaper. And the essays were not instantly reprinted in other
states.

Did The Federalist at least provide the necessary boost for New York
to ratify the Constitution?

Actually, no. When New York's convention met in Poughkeepsie in
late 1788, ten states had already ratified. The question facing the Empire
State, then, was whether it wanted to join Rhode Island and North Carolina in remaining outside the newly reconstituted Union. Besides that
grim prospect, Republicans, led by Governor George Clinton, had to consider the possibility-bruited by Alexander Hamilton and others-that
New York City would secede from New York State and ratify the Constitution on its own. It was on that basis, not out of love for the vision of the
country presented by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and The Federalist,
that New York held its collective nose and ratified the Constitution by a
vote of thirty to twenty-seven.

The Federalist does merit consideration, however, because the
monarchist-nationalist authorial coalition that produced it-Hamilton,
Madison, and Jay-would play a central role in implementing the new
Constitution once it was ratified. And what one finds in their collaboration is great confusion about the document produced by the Philadelphia
Convention. At times, the three august revolutionaries describe the con templated new government as federal, but at
others, they make it "national." In some
places they concede that the states would
retain their central role in American politics
under the new Constitution, but at others
they read the grants of power to the new
government very broadly.