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.” And Robert Yates, Governor Clinton’s watchdog, heard a confession — “a strong consolidated union, in which the idea of states should be nearly annihilated.” This is the story of the 2 days that set the summer’s course: the polite resolution to “correct and enlarge” the Articles, withdrawn by its own mover and replaced with the doctrine that a union “merely federal” will not do; Gerry’s warning that a convention with this power could annihilate the Confederation; Gouverneur Morris’s answer — a supreme government now, or a despot in twenty years, “for come he must”; the vote, 6 states to 1. And before the day ends, tiny Delaware threatens to walk. Then the first great question of design: who elects the people’s house — Sherman wanting the people to have as little to do as may be, Gerry blaming the excess of democracy, and Mason and Wilson answering with the grand depository and the federal pyramid on the broadest possible base.
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