Scouting, Volume 63, Number 1, January-February 1975 Page: 67
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had been prominent in drafting some of
its other parts. Later, after he had re-
signed when he was suspected —un-
justly — of taking a bribe from France
while he was the nation's Secretary of
State, he successfully defended Aaron
Burr against a charge of treason. Vir-
ginia's George Mason also refused to
sign the Constitution, mostly because
of the absence of a Bill of Rights. De-
spite being a Southerner, he was vio-
lently anti-slave, and he was against
the compromise extending the period
when they could be imported.
Alexander Hamilton did sign the
Constitution, but he wasn't too happy
when he did, calling it: "A shillyshally
thing of milk and water which could
not last." James Madison, Jr. was also
bitterly opposed to several of the key
provisions finally adopted.
On the last day of the Convention a
letter from the ailing Benjamin Franklin
was read to the delegates:
"I confess that there are several
parts of this Constitution which I do
not at present approve, but I am not
sure I shall never approve them. For,
having lived long, I have experienced
many instances of being obligated by
better information or fuller considera-
tion, to change opinions even on im-
portant subjects which I once thought
right but found to be otherwise. It is
therefore that the older I grow, the
more apt I am to doubt my own judg-
ment and to pay more respect to the
judgment of others.
"I doubt too whether any other Con-
vention we can obtain may be able to
make a better Constitution. For when
you assemble a number of men to have
advantage of their joint wisdom, you
inevitably assemble with those men all
their prejudices, their passions, their
errors of opinion, their local interests,
and their selfish views. From such an
assembly can a perfect production be
assembled? It therefore astonishes
me to find this system approaching so
near perfection as it does. Thus, I con-
sent to this Constitution because I ex-
pect no better, and because I am not
sure that it is not the best.
"On the whole, I cannot help ex-
pressing a wish that every member of
the Convention who may still have ob-
jections to it, would with me, on this
occasion, doubt a little of his own in-
fallibility — and to make manifest our
unanimity, put his name to this instru-
ment."
After the long, hard summer in Phila-
delphia, during which the delegates
worked in strict secrecy from the
people, the Constitution was finally
signed by 39 of the 42 delegates still
in town on September 1 7, 1 787. It still
had to be ratified by the states to take
effect, though, and it was only after
much local doubting and debating that
New Hampshire, in June, 1788, be-
came the ninth state to sign and place
the document in operation. By July, 11
states had signed. North Carolina and
Rhode Island withheld their sanction
until after the new federal government
was put in motion in the spring of
1789. Several of the early states to
sign, however, did so with reserva-
tions, exacting promises of amend-
ments in the near future for their un-
conditional approval. In almost all of
the states, too, the only people who
could vote had to possess a certain
amount of property. In some states
voters also had to be Protestants. As a
result, the numbers going to the polls
were generally small. In New York, for
example, only 2,800 votes were cast
either for or against the new Con-
stitution.
George Washington, who was 55
years old at the time, presided over
the Constitutional Convention, but he
wasn't very active on the floor. He
made only two speeches, one on the
opening day and one on the last. He
did not participate in the actual writing
— because of his officiating role — but
he was very influential behind-the-
scenes. James Madison , Jr., the Vir-
ginia lawyer-planter, who next to Ben-
jamin Franklin was the greatest intel-
lect present, prided himself that he
was not absent a single day of the
convention's meetings, nor "more than
a casual fraction of any hour in any
day." He was one of the most-involved
delegates. George Wythe, also from
Virginia, a teacher to Thomas Jeffer-
son, James Madison and John Mar-
shall, was also very active.
Another standout at the Constitu-
tional Convention was Connecticut's
Roger Sherman, the only person who
signed the Articles of Association in
1774, the Declaration of Independ-
ence, the Articles of Confederation
and the U.S. Constitution. Many of the
ultimate compromises were his work.
William Paterson, born in northern Ire-
land, represented New Jersey and he,
too, was one of the more effective
compromisers. Later he became an
Associate Justice of the Supreme
Court. Alexander Hamilton was a con-
vention hard-liner, always pressing for
extreme measures for the centraliza-
tion of authority, but he contributed
nothing of substance to the final draft.
One of the most popular delegates
with everyone — north and south, big
states and small states — was one-
legged Gouverneur Morris, from Penn-
sylvania. With a fine mind and great
skill with words, he was chosen to put
the final ideas of the convention into
written form, although the actual Com-
mittee of Style appointed to do this job
was headed by William Johnson, of
Connecticut and it went over the Mor-
ris draft word-by-word making
changes. One thing the committee re-
wrote was the preamble to the Consti-
tution, which originally read: "We, the
people of the states of (naming all the
states)." The reworked version, of
course, was "We, the People of the
United States . . ." This, too, was a
compromise. At first, it was thought
that all the 13 states would have to
ratify the document, so all of them
were named. Then, it was decided that
only the ratification by nine states
would be needed for acceptance. No-
body knew which states would make
up the first nine to sign, so the com-
mittee sidestepped the question by
lumping them all together.
The words that are so much the
work of Gouverneur Morris make up
the body of the U.S. Constitution as we
know it today, but he died in 1816
firmly convinced the United States
was then doomed by the "disease of
democracy." An ultra-Federalist, he
tried to dissolve the Union during the
war of 1812, at one point writing to a
friend: "... I should be glad to meet
with someone who could tell me what
has become of the Union, in what it
consists, and to what useful purpose it
endures."
History, of course, tells another
story. Under the only 7,000 words and
26 amendments of the Constitution the
United States has grown and pros-
pered and remained united, securing
the basic rights of man in spite of all
the profound economic, social, cul-
tural and political changes which have
occurred since 1789, when it took ef-
fect. John Marshall, later to become
Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court, observed at the signing 187
years ago that it was "intended to en-
dure for ages to come, and conse-
quently to be adapted to the various
crises of human affairs."
In a world and nation constantly and
sorely tried since then, the U.S. Con-
stitution has always and still stands
firm, well withstanding the tests of
time. ■
67
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 63, Number 1, January-February 1975, periodical, January 1975; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353656/m1/69/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.