With humility and self-deprecation, the ever modest George Washington accepted his unanimous election as president of what would become known as the Constitutional Convention on Friday, May 25, 1787. In Madison’s words, he “lamented his want of better qualifications” and asked the delegates for their indulgence for any “involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion.”
As his friends had predicted, Washington’s leadership over the proceedings lent an instant air of prestige to the convention; and the manner in which he was chosen brought a sense of gentility to the opening session. Washington, fifty-five years old and at the height of his popularity, was nominated for the honor by Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, who informed members that he had been instructed to do so by his state’s delegation. Considering, as Madison noted, that Pennsylvania’s own Benjamin Franklin “could have been thought of as a competitor” to Washington, Morris’s gesture “came with particular grace.” In fact, Franklin himself reportedly was set to nominate Washington, but the eighty-one-year-old Pennsylvanian, weakened and wracked with pain from agonizing kidney stones and severe gout, found it difficult to move about and missed the first day’s session, likely due to downpours that would have further impeded his ability to traverse Philadelphia’s streets.
Washington was well known to the delegates. Thirty of the fifty-five men who eventually attended the convention had served in his army and revered him. Among them were five men who had endured the ghastly winter at Valley Forge; forty-two had sat in the Continental Congress and knew well of his leadership qualities on the battlefield.
Madison pointed out that Washington reminded delegates of the importance of their upcoming work, “of the novelty of the scene of business in which he was to act.” His deference notwithstanding, Washington was a proud man, cognizant of the importance of history, tradition, and ceremony and well aware of the august position to which delegates had elected him; he was enormously touched by their confidence in him. Over the next few months, George Washington would remain virtually silent, both from the chair and when he surrendered the gavel to participate in committee of the whole, but delegates would be reassured by his quietude, bearing, and strength of leadership.
Perhaps more important, with Washington occupying the presiding chair, he would now be inextricably linked to any work, decision, and final document produced by the convention; whether explicit or by inference, his endorsement would carry enormous weight with the American people.
After the delegates elected Washington as convention president, they voted to name Major William Jackson as secretary; he had served with distinction in the Continental army, including as a member of Washington’s staff. They also appointed a committee to determine convention rules and read into the record the formal credentials of the attending delegates and the states. With fatigue a factor among members, the convention adjourned until Monday to give delegates who had journeyed great distances a chance to rest, acclimate themselves to the city, acquire lodgings, and become acquainted with each other and the issues ahead.
Members did not know it then, but May 26 would be the only Saturday until late July on which they would not meet. Inside the Pennsylvania State House, and across the American landscape, there was a sense of urgency in the air.
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NINE ADDITIONAL DELEGATES WERE in attendance at the statehouse on Monday, May 28, so when the convention resumed business at ten o’clock in the morning, thirty-eight men were in their seats ready to conduct business.
The most noteworthy new attendee was Benjamin Franklin. The weather had cleared and cooled, making the two-block trip from his home on Market Street much easier, yet Franklin, never shy or reserved, arrived at the statehouse in the most flamboyant way anyone could remember. Suffering from gout and in pain, Dr. Franklin was carried to the convention in a decorative sedan chair that he had shipped from Paris. Glass windows on both sides gave it the appearance of a small carriage, but instead of resting on wheels, it was supported by two poles, ten or twelve feet long, pliant enough to absorb some of the shock and vibrate only gently as the bearers carried Franklin over the cobble-stoned streets. When the carriers—who were prisoners from the nearby Walnut Street jail—reached the assembly room, delegates helped Franklin from the chair and he took his seat with the Pennsylvania delegation. The prisoners set down the sedan chair in one corner of the room and departed; they would return in the afternoon to carry Franklin home.
Franklin, the elder statesman, would lend his wisdom to the official proceedings, but he also served as the convention’s unofficial host. He had his dining room enlarged for the convention, and his home became an informal gathering place for delegates,
With Franklin’s spectacular arrival, both legends were now present at the convention—Washington standing tall at the front of the room and Franklin seated near the back—giving enormous dignity and a sense of unified purpose to the gathering on its first full day of work.
Outside and inside the statehouse, preparations were under way to ensure a smooth convention. Workmen had covered the cobblestoned streets with dirt and gravel to reduce the sound of disturbances in the street and the clatter of passing carriages in case the delegates chose to debate with the windows open. That would not be the case often. Even when temperatures rose to sweltering conditions later in the summer, the convention would conduct most of its business with the windows and doors shut closed.
There were two major reasons for this decision. First, when the portals remained open, delegates complained of a swarming inundation of bluebottle flies from a nearby stable. The second and more important reason cut to the heart of one of the most critical decisions the delegates would make during the summer of 1787—for this federal convention, secrecy would be the order of the day.
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DELEGATES INVOKED STRICT SECRECY rules to protect the convention from the potential “licentious publication of their proceedings.” As such, they agreed that no copies would be made of any journal entries without express approval of the convention, that only members would be permitted to inspect the official journal, and that “nothing spoken in the House be printed, or otherwise published or communicated without leave.” No journalists or spectators would be allowed to attend. Guards were posted at the locked doors and blinds were drawn across the closed windows.
Operating in secrecy permitted delegates to argue openly, engage in uninhibited debate, float trial balloons, build consensus, and reconsider their positions without tying their positions and their votes to the record, and without fear of being accused of inconsistency and fecklessness, or worse, vacillation or outright dishonesty. “Our doors will be shut, and communications upon the business of the convention be forbidden during its sitting,” wrote Virginia’s George Mason, agreeing that the decision was “a necessary precaution to prevent misrepresentations or mistakes.” After all, Mason explained, there was a “material difference between the appearance of a subject in its first crude and undigested shape, and after it shall have been properly matured and arranged.” Years later, James Madison would acknowledge that “no Constitution would ever have been adopted by the convention if the debates had been public.”
Delegates seemed to adhere to the strict secrecy rules in virtually every instance, even when corresponding with confidants and friends throughout the convention. Madison wrote to Jefferson in early June and felt comfortable only naming the delegates in attendance at that time. Even by mid-July, Madison wrote to Jefferson and confessed: “I am still under the mortification of being restrained from disclosing any part of [the] proceedings,” but promised to “make amends for my silence” as soon as he was at liberty to do so.
Augmenting the secrecy provision was the agreement by delegates to meet in the more informal committee of the whole to debate key points, rather than recording every vote in a formal meeting of the convention. Rufus King pointed out that “changes of opinion would be frequent in the course of the business.” Recording yeas and nays on every matter “would fill the minutes with contradictions.” Mason concurred, adding that such a record of members’ opinions “would be an obstacle to a change of them on conviction.” If every vote was recorded, delegates would be less likely to change their mind for fear of being called to task by “adversaries” after the convention had concluded.
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THE SECRECY RULES, ESPECIALLY, along with the committee of the whole decision, benefited the convention in several ways, politically and practically.
First, it allowed delegates the breathing room and the flexibility they would need as they debated individual components and considered the enormity of their overall actions.
Second, as it became clear that the debate would move well beyond the convention’s charter to merely alter the Articles of Confederation, the full breadth of the delegates’ intentions to create a strong central government remained within the walls of the Pennsylvania State House; otherwise there would likely have been howls of protest from political opponents, such as Jefferson (from Paris), Samuel Adams (from Massachusetts), and Patrick Henry (from Virginia). Secrecy enabled the influential proponents of a powerful national government—Madison most notably—to build momentum without outside interference.
Third, the shroud of secrecy enabled delegates to finish their audacious and monumental work without outside distractions from the press and the general public that would have indisputably bogged down and chilled the debate. Without the secrecy provision, it is virtually inconceivable that they could have completed their task in an astonishing four months’ time.
Finally, the secret discussions taking place inside the shuttered doors and windows of the statehouse, the sentries posted to prevent intruders, the agreement forbidding delegates from sharing any information outside the walls of the convention—all of this enveloped the convention proceedings in an aura of awe and reverence. There could be little doubt that the delegates were working on something of great importance. This secrecy scenario may have angered some prominent dissenters and certain members of the public, but for most, it filled the convention with intrigue and mystery and magnitude. Just as significant, inside the statehouse, the secrecy pact imbued the delegates with a sense of seriousness, urgency, daring, and gutsiness as they worked. The secret proceedings, coupled with the historic statehouse location and the presence of Franklin and Washington, were not merely symbolic trappings of the convention, but components that propelled the delegates to attempt—and achieve—one of history’s boldest strategic maneuvers.
Indeed, no one argued with Madison and Hamilton when they asserted that decisions made by the delegates would decide forever the fate of republican government; nor with Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur Morris when he proclaimed that “the whole human race will be affected by the proceedings of this Convention”—nor with Washington when he declared: “The event is in the hand of God.”
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SECRECY NOTWITHSTANDING, JAMES MADISON fully grasped the need to record the convention’s work for posterity and trusted himself more than anyone to accomplish the task. The work of the convention would determine the “happiness of a people … and possibly the cause of liberty throughout the world,” and thus deserved to have its debates and discussions recorded. Madison’s goal was to “preserve as far as I could an exact account of what might pass in the convention while executing its trust.”
William Jackson was the convention’s official secretary, but Madison wanted more than the sparseness and constrained language that often accompanies an official record or journal. He wanted to record the speeches, the reasoning and rationale, the color with which delegates made their points and proffered their arguments. Other delegates took notes—Hamilton, Mason, Rufus King of Massachusetts, New York’s Robert Yates for a time—but most of these were incomplete; none remotely approached the voluminous and exacting note-taking of Madison. To ensure that he could hear as much of the discussion as possible, he chose a seat near Washington and Jackson, with his back to the chair, so that he faced members on his left and right. “In this favorable position … I noted in terms legible and abbreviations and marks intelligible to myself what was read from the Chair or spoken by the members,” he explained. At the end of each session, or within a day or two, Madison would then write out his notes longhand “in the extent and form preserved in my own hand on my files.”
Madison’s labors were all the more valuable due to his virtual perfect attendance at the convention; unlike many delegates who came and went throughout the summer, Madison noted that he was “not absent a single day, nor more than a casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, unless a very short one.” While he was devoted to his task, Madison found his work taxing. Battling his chronic health issues during the hot and humid summer of 1787, Madison acknowledged years later that the combined exertions of “writing out the debates,” participating fully in the discussions, and attending the convention without any break “almost killed” him.
Nonetheless, as a friend of Madison’s remarked well after the convention: “Having undertaken the task, he was determined to accomplish it.”
Madison wrote down virtually everything, even remarks that were critical of him. He wrote to Jefferson in July: “I have taken lengthy notes of everything that has passed, and mean to go on with the drudgery, if no indisposition obliges me to discontinue it.”
When New Jersey’s William Paterson objected that the large states, especially Virginia and Pennsylvania, were overstepping their bounds in the initial plan for the new federal government, Madison faithfully recorded: “He complained of the manner in which Mr. M & Mr. Gov. Morris had treated the small states.” Madison certainly could have omitted the reference to “Mr. M,” but his scruples—or as one historian called it, “an abnormal or extravagant regard for accuracy”—prevented him from doing so. Later, Delaware’s John Dickinson also chastised Madison for pushing sweeping changes that would drastically limit the power of the small states, and Madison painstakingly and accurately recorded Dickinson’s objections.
His dedication to accuracy, honesty, and comprehensiveness compelled him to record the “nasty” remarks directed toward him. Virtually all of Madison’s longhand accounts were derived from his own note-taking during sessions.
Ever mindful of the convention’s secrecy provision, James Madison kept virtually silent about his notes until decades later, when he shared them with Thomas Jefferson. They remained unpublished until 1840, three years after his death and fifty-three years after the historic gathering in Philadelphia.