The small-state delegates pressed their advantage a week later, when William Paterson presented the New Jersey Plan to the delegates.93 The Virginians had caucused behind the scenes to produce a plan that shocked the small-state delegates, who thought it would result in an excessively strong national government. In response, the small-state delegates had caucused privately too, to produce a rival scheme of government. The New Jersey Plan was a bombshell. It modified the Articles of Confederation, but unlike the Virginia Plan did not junk them. Congress would have a taxing power, but would continue as a unicameral house, with each state given a single vote. When Paterson introduced his plan, John Dickinson turned to Madison and said, “you see the consequence of pushing things too far.”94 There were now two radically different plans on the floor, and the debate between them would consume the deliberations and passions of the delegates for the next month.
To resolve the crisis, on July 2 the delegates appointed a Committee of Eleven, with one member from each state in attendance at the time, to settle on a compromise. At Franklin’s suggestion, the committee devised the plan of representation now found in the Constitution: representation by population in the House of Representatives, and equal representation for states in the Senate. The delegates had previously agreed that state legislatures should appoint congressional senators; now they agreed that small states should have the same representation as large states in the Senate. Delegates from the larger states objected, but were outvoted on July 7;95 on July 16, the Convention ratified the committee’s entire proposal.96 This came to be called the Connecticut Compromise, but the label is misleading, for it was less a compromise than a defeat for nationalists from the large states.
The large-state delegates met the morning of July 17 to see whether their plans for a Senate appointed by the House of Representatives might be salvaged, but decided that the game was lost.97 When the Framers convened that day, the small-state delegates returned to the attack, this time against another of Madison’s pet ideas, a congressional veto over state laws. On Madison’s extended republic theory, the national government would be less prone to factions and interest-group inefficiencies than state governments; the Virginia Plan’s Resolution Six would therefore have given Congress the power to “negative,” or veto, state laws that it thought contravened the Constitution.98 The delegates had voted this down once, on June 8;99 but lest any doubt remain, they rejected it again on July 17.100
Until then there had been broad agreement that the president should be appointed by Congress. If anything, the New Jersey Plan tilted in the direction of parliamentary governance, since it reopened the question of whether there should be more than one president at a time, and would have permitted Congress to remove the president at the request of a majority of state governors.101 Now, however, the Pennsylvanians counterattacked; Gouverneur Morris moved that the president be elected by popular suffrage. But when it came to a vote, only Pennsylvania supported the resolution.102 Maryland’s Luther Martin then proposed that the president be chosen by electors appointed by state legislatures, but delegates were still wedded to appointment by Congress, and voted 8 to 2 against, with only Delaware and Maryland in favor.103 The delegates finally voted unanimously for a congressionally appointed president.104 Even the dissenters had given up, and everyone must have thought that the issue was at last settled.
That afternoon, on July 17, the delegates broke early. A group of them, led by Washington, visited Gray’s Ferry, where one could observe the exotic plants of Bartram’s Garden, drink tea, or fish in the Schuylkill.105 The leafy walks may have prompted reflection about the office Washington soon would hold, for two days later, on July 19, the delegates suddenly reversed themselves. On a motion by Gouverneur Morris, they unanimously agreed to reconsider the method of installing a president.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS—THE MAN OF THE CONVENTION
Morris was a representative of the rising merchant class and a member of the court party. He was as fearful of democracy as any delegate, but now he sought to persuade country party nationalists to support the democratic election of presidents. What Morris wanted was a president who, clothed with the authority conferred by a popular election, would strengthen the central government.106 That was not an argument that would appeal to many delegates, however. Ingeniously, Morris argued that the lower classes needed a tribune of the people, and this could only be the president. Congress would come to represent the rich and powerful, and if it could appoint the president, “legislative tyranny” would ensue. What was needed was a separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. “If the Legislature elect,” said Morris, “it will be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction.”107
Morris had cleverly sought to appeal to several constituencies among the delegates. The call for a tribune of the people would appeal to the pro-debtor crowd, who wanted a new Tribune Gracchus to redistribute wealth. Morris also sought to enlist the support of country party members with the buzzwords of intrigue and cabal. And the reference to congressional tyranny would appeal to states’-rights supporters, notably Elbridge Gerry, who had expressed fear of corrupt bargains if the legislature appointed the president.108 Finally, Morris sought to appeal to that man of theory, James Madison, who Morris knew would hear echoes of Montesquieu in an argument for separation of powers.
The two men had known each other for some years. They did not overlap in the Continental Congress, but both were in Philadelphia in the early 1780s. For the first month of the Convention they saw little of each other. Though he was present at its start, Morris had left after a few days, not returning until July 2, when he wasted no time in making up for his absence by launching into a patronizing speech in favor of a Senate composed of American aristocrats.109 In his brashness, he had failed to take the measure of the delegates, and Madison was especially annoyed. On July 11 he admonished Morris for continually insisting on the “political depravity of men, and the necessity of checking one vice and interest” against another.110 It wasn’t so much what Morris had said, however, as the way he had said it. Madison didn’t think men were angels, but Morris had spoken like a brassy New Yorker, and this had irritated the Virginian.
Morris was everything Madison was not. The New Yorker was tall, confident, ebullient, and witty. He had lost a leg, and his right arm was withered, but this scarcely slowed him down. By contrast, Madison was a hypochondriac who outlived every other member of the Convention. He was especially shy with women, while Morris enjoyed a remarkably successful career as a rake. While the story that Morris owed his peg leg to a jump from a window to escape a jealous husband is probably apocryphal, we do know something of his many affairs, thanks to his candid diaries and correspondence. The letters that Mme Chaumont wrote to him are too heated to be quoted, sniffed a prim Morris biographer.111 More discreetly still, Morris’s granddaughter complained of the lady’s “ceaseless annoyances.”112 With a touch of envy, a French diplomat described him as “sans moeurs, et, si l’on en croit ses ennemis, sans principes.”113
At the Convention Morris was the master of the strategic compromise, the adroit suggestion, the art of the deal. A Georgia delegate described him as:
one of those Genius’s in whom every species of talents combine to render him conspicuous and flourishing in public debate:—He winds through all the mazes of rhetoric, and throws around him such a glare that he charms, captivates, and leads away all the senses of all who hear him. 114
As for Madison, the Georgian recalled his scholarship, industry, sweet temper, and “great modesty.”115
This was a trying time for Madison. When he heard of the New Jersey Plan, he had felt “serious anxiety.”116 Before the Connecticut Compromise of July 16, he and the other delegates had feared that the Convention might end in failure,