The Constitutional Convention

At my school, there is a club of sorts called 'History Masterclass' in which students teach their peers about an area of history they find particularly interesting or know a lot about. Of course, I had to join in, and I've been to every session so far (except for one week, when I was ill). All of the lectures were incredibly interesting, and there was such a broad range. I even felt a bit ashamed because my interests tend to be around the late 18th century- so modern history- and people were going back to the Middle Ages! The 18th century feels a lot more familiar when compared to 13th century China.

Here, I have the edited transcript of my own History Masterclass about the US Constitutional Convention of 1787. It's a long one- I hope you enjoy!

My History Masterclass: The 1787 Constitutional Convention

[Introduction edited out]

This is the only thing I’ll say about the actual wording of the constitution because everyone loves a quick fun fact. If you don’t remember anything else from this, remember this

So, what exactly happened between May the 25th and September the 17th of 1787 that resulted in this document being produced- one that’s stood the test of time so much that even centuries later it’s the foundation of the US government and also inspired numerous other countries to become democracies modeled after the US? And also is cool enough for me to have it next to the mirror in my room? And here in the cover of my book?

First, a bit of background. The US was officially independent, but the country was governed by the Congress of the Confederation, whose powers were so limited that they basically didn’t have any.

The individual state governments were powerful, and could just refuse to do something the congress told them to do if they wanted to. The congress was also in vast debt, but couldn’t do anything about it because it required all the states to agree if it wanted to change the laws for tax, which they didn’t, and states could just refuse to give money, which some did.

It got so bad that the congress owed both France and it’s own people millions of dollars, which it could not possibly pay back. Finally, it was decided that something had to be done.

The flag looks a bit strange because at this point, there were only 13 states. The south tended to be more agricultural (and yes, slave owning) and the north more industrial. Contrary to what happened later, the biggest conflicts at the convention were actually not between the north and the south, but instead between the big states and the small states. And unfortunately, no states really tried to abolish slavery at any time because it was a meeting of old white men and slavery was beneficial to almost all of them. The issue of slavery did get brought up, but not in a way that anyone today would approve of, but we’ll get to that later.

I’m going to skip most of the actual country building legislature discussion and skip right onto what everyone wants to hear about:

The Major Beef of the convention, and there was plenty of it.

Firstly, I’ll talk about the Virginia plan. That one’s Virginia- arguably the most central of the original 13 states, and even though it isn’t actually THAT far south, it’s considered Southern, which explains the terrible accents.

These are only a very small sample of famous people from Virginia and also my dad. I was going to make a list of events that happened there too, but to me it seems like almost every important battle in US history happened here and I didn’t want to type them all out. In summary- Virginia was a Big Deal, and they were influential at the convention.

Their proposal was to do with representation- it was all very well deciding to have an elected government, but how would seats in the new congress be allocated? Virginia said that it should be proportional to the population of each state, which makes sense right? The problem was, Virginia was one of the biggest states by population, and smaller states like Rhode Island had a fraction of the population. Naturally, the Virginia plan was supported by other big states, like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. As well as states that wanted to have a huge population in the future, like the Carolinas and Georgia.

This is when New Jersey entered the ring. They said that they liked it how it was, and wanted each state to be represented equally, no matter what their population was. This was supported by states no one’s heard of, like Delaware. For a while, it seemed that the entire convention would fail, and without it the country would inevitably collapse. The European nations were watching from Europe and hoping this would happen so they could be all like ‘I’ll have that’, because the states would be very easy to defeat when weak and divided.

But then- Connecticut proposed that maybe instead of everyone fighting, they could just have 2 different groups- the House of Representatives, which would be representatives, and the Senate, which would have 2 senators from each state. Everyone was happy with this, and it’s what we still have today.

Once this had been decided, everyone concentrated more closely on the House of Representatives.

Some states had already abolished slavery, or were going to in the near future. Some had so many slaves that the states didn’t think they would be able to function without them. So the next issue was whether slaves would be counted as part of the overall population of a state; weirdly, states with large slave populations, like Virginia and the Carolinas, argued that slaves should be considered equals to ‘free people’, and the states where it had been abolished argued that slaves didn’t count as equal beings, which kind of seems the wrong way round if you think about it too hard.

But this is when you remember that this was a different time, and literally every white person was racist, and they didn’t actually care about the slaves as people.

Again, it seemed like the convention was going to collapse, which is a recurring theme of the whole convention- it was nowhere near as calm as it looks in the painting I showed at the beginning.

Eventually, the ‘three fifths’ compromise was suggested. This meant that enslaved people were considered to be worth 3/5 of a free person, for the purposes of representation. It also meant that slavery was officially enshrined in the constitution, which would make it harder in later years to abolish it. However, despite all this, they never actually mention the word slave, just ‘all other persons’. This satisfied all of the parties at the convention, perhaps not the actual enslaved people who were now officially ‘worth less’ according to the constitution.

That’s the end of the big fights between the states- now onto some much more personal beef.

James Madison, who later became President, spent the whole convention taking EXTREMELY detailed notes on literally everything that happened. A lot of what we know today is from what he wrote down. A few years after the convention, John Quincy Adams, who would also later become president but was not at the convention, saw in the notes of the official secretary that a guy called Charles Pickney had made a proposal during the convention.

Pickney, one of the signers from South Carolina, sent a copy of his speech to Adams, and to everyone’s shock, it was almost identical to the final version of the constitution, which is weird because no one’s heard of him and surely we would have done if he had actually written the constitution. But the thing is, Madison and Pickney didn’t get along, and Madison is credited as one of the main writers of the constitution. And it was later discovered that Pickney had made his proposal TWICE- but Madison, despite his detailed note taking had absolutely no record of either proposal.

Maybe it was just because I was in Pickney’s home state at the time, but I was very much inclined to take his side in this. But for now, the mystery remains unsolved.

Just a quick mention of my favourite person, Alexander Hamilton. It’s true that he made a 6 hour speech! But people weren’t impressed by him they mostly just hated him because his plan was a bit too monarchist for most of them and the building would get ridiculously hot because it was the middle of summer, and no one wants to listen to a 6 hour speech anyway. His main contribution was writing the Federalist papers afterwards, to get the Constitution ratified in New York- it needed approval from at least 9 of the 13 states to begin to be enforced. The Federalist papers really influenced the vote in New York and other states as well, and are still used as political reference points now.

Speaking of now, it’s being discussed that another constitutional convention, the first since 1787, might happen. 34 states need to propose it and so far, 29 have. Once they’ve proposed one, their proposal lasts indefinitely, so until 34 states have agreed or they can take it back if they want.

This would be a great opportunity to make important changes to the constitution! Gun control could be enforced and actual equal rights enshrined in the constitution! Or there could be fights like there were in 1787, and they would only be magnified by today’s political climate and society.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about a new convention. It could help to fix so many problems in American society today, but in the wrong tiny hands it could go disastrously wrong.

I’ll leave you to make your own conclusions, and thank you for listening.