“Tis Done!… We Have Become a Nation”
The entire process of creating a new constitution for the United States had occurred with stunning, even unimaginable, swiftness. James Madison first arrived in Philadelphia for the Federal Convention in May 1787 and the Constitution had been fully ratified before the end of June 1788. The initial framework of a new government, the debates that followed, the modifications, the drafting, the redrafting, the preamble, final approval, the publication of most of The Federalist, and the ratification by the requisite number of states—all of it had been accomplished in a little more than thirteen months. The “miracle” that George Washington had alluded to after the Constitutional Convention continued throughout the ratification process.
A few days after an enormous July 4, 1788, celebration in Philadelphia—what the city’s residents labeled the Grand Procession to celebrate both Independence Day and the Constitution’s ratification—Philadelphia physician and declaration signer Benjamin Rush wrote to a friend in New Jersey and described the glorious event. When he finished his detailed account of the day, Rush took a moment to triumphantly sum up his feelings and the thoughts of Americans with simple words that have echoed down through the decades:
“Tis done!… We have become a nation.”
But quick-moving events thereafter made it clear that the nation needed one more important document.
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DURING THE RATIFICATION DEBATES and in the months afterward, Madison and other Federalists had seen and heard enough to know that a people’s bill of rights would need to be added to the Constitution quickly. Otherwise, support and momentum for the national government would erode, and, just as important, some states would push for a second federal convention to address the Constitution’s shortcomings, a gathering that could threaten the entire document.
Powerful voices clamored for a bill of rights. Madison had witnessed the passionate arguments of Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Monroe during the Virginia ratification debates. In Massachusetts, opponents criticized the Constitution and accused proponents of undermining the achievements of the American Revolution. Mercy Otis Warren, a poet and essayist who traced her roots back to the Mayflower and whose family had been active revolutionary leaders, published her scathing Observations on the New Constitution under the pseudonym “a Columbian Patriot.” In a brilliant piece of anti-Constitution writing, she articulated eighteen specific deficiencies of the new document, including her claims that there were no “well-defined limits” on the judiciary; the executive and legislative branches were “dangerously blended” and a cause for alarm; one representative for every 30,000 inhabitants is “very inadequate”; and most egregiously, there was no provision for a bill of rights “to guard against the dangerous encroachments of power in too many instances to be named.” Warren criticized the Constitutional Convention for “shutting up the doors … and resolving that no member should correspond with gentlemen in different states.” Such secrecy, she said, led to the “annihilation of the independence and sovereignty of the thirteen distinct states.”
Warren’s treatise was among the most influential and powerful antifederalist rhetoric during the ratification process. Massachusetts eventually ratified the Constitution, but the vote was relatively close: 187 in favor to 168 against. That vote was followed by neighboring Rhode Island’s rejection of the Constitution by popular referendum.
Then, on July 26, 1788, strategically and geographically important New York ratified the Constitution on a close vote, 30 to 27, but also agreed unanimously to send a “circular letter” to the other states calling for a second convention to consider amendments. In early August, North Carolina adjourned its convention without ratifying, with anti-Federalists expressing strong dissatisfaction that amendments were not included prior to the ratification vote. The North Carolina decision plus the New York circular letter energized anti-Federalists elsewhere, especially in Virginia, where Patrick Henry was also rallying support for a second convention. Henry had told his fellow Virginians during ratification that no less an “illustrious citizen” than Thomas Jefferson “advises you to reject this government, till it be amended, and Jefferson’s opinion had not changed.” In Madison’s view, the notion of another convention was dangerous to the Constitution’s future, a “signal of concord and hope to the enemies of the Constitution everywhere.” Amendments aside, a second convention could bring down the entire Constitution and, possibly, the Union. Unless the first Congress approved amendments—specifically a bill of rights—anti-Federalist sentiments for a second convention would likely prevail.
Madison pondered the Bill of Rights even as the new government took shape.
On September 13, Congress formally announced that the Constitution had been ratified by the required number of states and set the first Wednesday in January 1789 for appointing presidential electors in the eleven states that had ratified it and the first Wednesday in February for electors to vote for a president in their respective states. The “present seat of Congress”—New York—was established as “the place for commencing proceedings under the said Constitution” during the first week of March.
On April 14, 1789, the Congress’s secretary, Charles Thomson, arrived in Mount Vernon and notified George Washington that every elector had cast a ballot for him as the nation’s first president—he had won unanimously—a decision that was not unexpected but was significant nonetheless.
After a triumphant journey north, where he was greeted by cheering thousands, Washington was inaugurated on April 30 in New York, where cannon again boomed and church bells pealed across lower Manhattan. More than 500 soldiers led the parade procession to Federal Hall, where Washington took the oath of office to become the first man in American history to answer to the salutation “Mr. President.”
Always the reluctant orator, and admitting the “greater anxieties” that filled him as he was about to embark on this new journey, Washington nonetheless struck the right chord in his twenty-minute inaugural address when he reminded Americans of their national purpose: “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of Government, are justly considered, perhaps as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
On the first full day of the new federal administration, May 1, 1789, the New York Daily Advertiser proclaimed: “Good government, the best of blessings, now commences under favorable auspices. We beg to congratulate our readers on the great event.”
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JAMES MADISON, WHO HAD defeated James Monroe by 300 votes to win one of Virginia’s ten seats in the House of Representatives in the First Congress, had promised voters during the campaign that, if elected, he would work to convince his colleagues to recommend amendments to the states for ratification. “It is my sincere opinion that the Constitution ought to be revised,” he had said during the campaign, “and that the first Congress meeting under it ought to prepare and recommend to the states for ratification the most satisfactory provisions for all essential rights.” These should include, “particularly, the rights of conscience in the fullest latitude, the freedom of the press, trials by jury, security against general warrants, etc.” He believed that a bill of rights, “pursued with a proper moderation and in a proper mode,” would satisfy “well-meaning opponents” and provide “additional guides in favor of liberty.”
Madison kept his campaign promise. On May 4, 1789, he informed his fellow representatives in the House that, within three weeks, he “intended to bring on the subject of amendments to the Constitution.” He stressed to lawmakers, particularly the Federalists, that his goal was to make the Constitution “as acceptable to the whole people of the United States as it had been acceptable to a majority of them.” He also believed the two holdout states—North Carolina and Rhode Island—would be more inclined to ratify the Constitution and come into the union once amendments were added.
Madison drafted nineteen amendments to the Constitution, which he presented to Congress on June 8, 1789. The House reduced this number to seventeen and sent them along to the Senate. The Senate whittled the number to twelve and the House agreed. On September 25, the twelve approved amendments were sent to the states for ratification. The states rejected the first two: the original “first amendment” dealt with apportioning representation in the House of Representatives and would have made the size of the House unwieldy as the country’s population increased; the second prevented members of Congress from voting to increase their own pay. Any pay hike passed by a particular Congress would not take effect until the next Congress was seated. (Ironically, this original second amendment was finally added to the Constitution 200 years later, in 1992, as the Twenty-seventh Amendment.)
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THE TEN AMENDMENTS THAT we know today as the Bill of Rights were fully ratified on December 15, 1791, and they became part of the Constitution. Like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution before them, the ten amendments were engrossed, this time on a single parchment page by a congressional clerk, William Lambert. The Bill of Rights was signed by House Speaker Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, and the president of the Senate, Vice President John Adams.
Together, the amendments form a bulwark on behalf of the people against government encroachment and overreach and are built upon the foundation of the Constitution by protecting what people then—and now—consider among their most precious liberties: freedom of speech, religion, assembly, the due process of law, the sovereignty of the state, and the power and sanctity of the individual.
None of the amendments grant powers to the people; rather, the citizenry was—and is—presumed to already possess the rights, powers, and privileges referred to in the amendments. The Bill of Rights enjoins the government from ever abridging or repealing these rights, and the manner in which they are written—not articulating what a citizen can do but what the government cannot do—reflects this principle.
In essence, the Bill of Rights was a furtherance of the “We the People” principle captured by Gouverneur Morris in his stirring preamble, and the “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” concept so boldly stated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Ironically, of course, it was the opponents of the Constitution, those who fought ratification unless a bill of rights was included, who ultimately forced Madison and the other Federalists to draft and approve the first ten amendments. Madison never would have campaigned for Congress on the promise of proposing amendments to the Constitution if Monroe had not pushed him during the pair’s battle for election to the nation’s first House of Representatives; the battle between the two future presidents for a congressional seat was just as surely a battle for the future of the Constitution.
Another irony: the Bill of Rights, omitted from the original document, initially opposed by the new government’s strongest proponents and supported by its staunchest foes, is today—perhaps along with Morris’s preamble—the most recognized and cherished portion of the entire Constitution.
The Bill of Rights did not come easily; ratification debates in the states were nearly as contentious and rancorous as the arguments over the Constitution. But Madison, who had drafted the bulk of the amendments, kept his word to also push them to passage, fighting the apathy of some, the diffidence of others, and the outright hostility of obstructionists. Without Madison, the Bill of Rights never would have become law: the father of the Constitution was also the father of the Bill of Rights, though on the latter, Madison’s opponents forced his hand.
One other by-product occurred with the approval of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. When the two states that had not ratified the Constitution saw that the process had begun to incorporate a bill of rights, they finally came into the fold and joined the union: North Carolina ratified on November 21, 1789; and Rhode Island—which had stubbornly refused to even send delegates to the Constitutional Convention—voted to ratify by a narrow two-vote margin on May 29, 1790.
Even Patrick Henry, still not enamored with the Constitution or the strong central government as a whole, ended his active opposition.
Because of the Bill of Rights, there would be no need for a second convention. The Constitution was saved. On the amended document and the new republic that it governed, America’s original thirteen states had finally spoken with one voice.
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IN THE YEARS FOLLOWING its ratification, the engrossed copy of the United States Constitution remained in “custody and charge” of the State Department. Thomas Jefferson accepted his appointment as secretary of state on February 14, 1790, and on March 21, he arrived in New York to begin his tenure. He likely viewed firsthand the document he now called “unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men.” From that moment until the early 1920s, the original Constitution, usually stored in desk drawers and office cabinets, never passed out of the secretary of state’s custody, was never put on exhibition, and suffered virtually no deterioration.
The travels of the State Department, however, kept the parchment sheets on the move. From 1790 to 1800 alone, they followed the department and the government through several offices in the new capital of Philadelphia; only from August to November of 1789 did the secretary of state’s office leave Philadelphia—fleeing a devastating yellow fever epidemic—and relocate briefly to the statehouse in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1800, the federal district created from portions of Maryland and Virginia, and the federal city—Washington City, or Washington—became the permanent seat of the American government. On May 27, 1800, Jefferson described the letters and papers of his office as “being packed up for removal to the City of Washington.”
When the Constitution parchments, the Declaration of Independence, and the other papers first arrived in Washington, carried by vessel to Lear’s Wharf on the Potomac, they were placed first in the Treasury, the only building sufficiently completed to receive them. In late August 1800, they were moved to one of the “Seven Buildings” at Nineteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and in May 1801, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were relocated to the War Office, a large brick building on Seventeenth Street.
There, both documents would remain until 1814, when they—along with the new government they defined and emblemized, the capital city of Washington, and the fledging United States of America—faced the threat of permanent destruction.