American Political History

On June 11th, 1787, Roger Sherman proposed the settlement — population in the House, one vote per state in the Senate — and the Constitutional Convention voted it down without a debate. This is the story of the 5 weeks it cost to walk back: Luther Martin’s 2-day endurance speech; Benjamin Franklin, 81 and unchurched, asking a deadlocked room why it had never once prayed — and the convention adjourning without a vote because it couldn’t afford a chaplain; Gunning Bedford telling the large stat...

In the second week of June 1787, the small states stopped losing votes politely. David Brearley proposed erasing every state boundary and redrawing America into 13 equal parts. William Paterson declared New Jersey would never confederate on proportional representation — “I would rather submit to a monarch, to a despot, than to such a fate” — and James Wilson answered that Pennsylvania would never confederate on anything else. This is the story of the counterstroke: the New Jersey Plan, 9 reso...

On May 29th, 1787, Edmund Randolph — 33 years old, governor of Virginia, owner of the finest voice in the room — rose to open the main business of the Federal Convention, and 3 notebooks took him down. Madison recorded a statesman’s autopsy of the Confederation and an exhortation not to let the moment pass. Doctor McHenry caught the raw material Madison left out: “Are we not on the eve of war?” and the maxim that America’s chief danger arose from “the democratic parts of our constitutions.” A...

4 prisoners from the Walnut Street jail carried Benjamin Franklin to the Constitutional Convention in a sedan chair — the oldest delegate, 81, riding above the cobblestones to sit with the youngest, a 26-year-old former army captain. Jefferson, reading the delegate list in Paris, called them “an assembly of demigods.” William Pierce of Georgia, sitting among them, wrote down what they actually looked like — and his private sketches of every man in the room are the heart of this episode: Madis...

James Madison stepped off the New York stage on May 3rd, 1787 — 11 days before the Federal Convention was scheduled to open, and 22 days before it actually could. This is the story of those waiting weeks and the first days of business: the muddy roads that held the delegates back, the Virginia delegation caucusing every afternoon to shape a plan that would speak first, General Washington’s escort into the city, and his apology, from the president’s chair, for his own inexperience. It is also ...