September 8, 1787: Ready for a Second Draft

Alexander Hamilton by Jacques Reich, c. 1899-1920

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_S_NPG.72.27?destination=node/63231%3Fedan_q%3Dalexander%2520hamilton

“The House of Representatives was on so narrow a scale, as to be really dangerous, and to warrant a jealousy in the people for their liberties.”

--Alexander Hamilton

Saturday, September 8, 1787: The Convention Today

The Convention considered Presidential impeachment. The draft Constitution allowed Presidents to be impeached for treason and bribery. Mason (VA) thought this was too limited. “Treason, as defined in the Constitution, will not reach many great and dangerous offences.... Attempts to subvert the Constitution may not be treason.” He moved to have add “maladministration” as a cause for Presidential impeachment. Gerry (MA) seconded.

Madison (VA) found this too “vague.” It would make the President’s tenure dependent on Congress’s approval. Gouverneur Morris (PA) found it unnecessary, since the President was up for reelection every four years: Presidents guilty of maladministration would lose reelection.

Mason withdrew the wording of “maladministration” and changed it to “other high crimes and misdemeanors.” This passed with no noted debate.

While “bribery” has a clear legal meaning, and “treason” is defined in the Constitution, “high crimes and misdemeanors,” lifted verbatim from British laws for removing executive and judicial officers, is imprecise. In English precedent, an officer could be impeached for actions which were not necessarily in violation of a law. Thus, “high crimes and Misdemeanors” are any corrupt action which leads Congress to determine that the President is no longer fit to hold public trust.

Madison wanted the Supreme Court, not the Senate, to try Presidential impeachments. This failed 2–9, Pennsylvania and Virginia in support.

There were then a series of motions that cleaned up various odds and ends of the draft Constitution, making the language and intentions clearer. Finally, a month after they’d begun consideration of the draft, this stage of the work was completed. Now a Committee of Style was appointed to write a second draft of the Constitution incorporating all the approved changes to the first draft. The members of that committee were:

• Johnson (CT)
• Hamilton (NY)
• G. Morris
• Madison
• King

At the last second before adjournment, Williamson (NC) moved to reconsider the clause dictating the number of Representatives in the House of Representatives. He wanted to increase the number. Madison seconded.

Sherman (CT) was opposed since the Constitution gave Congress the power to increase the size of the House, but Hamilton was strongly in favor. While he supported “a vigorous government,” he found it “essential that the popular branch of it should be on a broad foundation.” He also worried that the Senate and the President would be too close and corrupted. A more numerous House of Representatives would be a necessary counterweight.

The motion narrowly lost, 5–6, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina in favor.

Synopsis

• The Convention added “other high crimes and misdemeanors” to “bribery” and “treason,” as reasons for Presidential impeachment.
• With consideration of the first draft of the Constitution complete, a five-member Committee of Style was appointed to write a second draft.

Delegates Today

• Johnson (CT) dined with Mifflin (PA) and spent the evening meeting with the Committee of Style. He bought 40 shillings worth of books.
• Washington (VA) dined at Springsbury with the club. Elizabeth Powel sent him a reflecting lamp for the hall at Mt. Vernon. She well knew “your delicacy on the subject of accepting the smallest present even from your best friends,” but pointed out that lamps such as this would save oil and money. The General wrote a brief but unusually sprightly thank you note. “The reflecting lamp, with which you have been so obliging as to present me, I shall highly esteem. The benefits which will flow from the general use of such Lamps are too apparent for the light of them to be long hid from the American World. Neat simplicity is among the most desirable properties of the one you have sent me, but that which stamps the highest value thereon, is the hand from which it comes.”
• Franklin (PA) received a letter from Katteuha, a Cherokee leader with the formal title of “Beloved Woman,” encouraging peace between their peoples. “I am in hopes if you Rightly consider it that woman is the mother of All—and that woman Does not pull Children out of Trees or Stumps nor out of old Logs, but out of their Bodies, so that they ought to mind what a woman says, and look upon her as a mother—and I have Taken the privelage to Speak to you as my own Children, and the same as if you had sucked my Breast—and I am in hopes you have a beloved woman amongst you who will help to put her Children Right if they do wrong, as I shall do the same... tho’ I am a woman giving you this Talk, I am in hopes that you and all the Beloved men in Congress will pay particular Attention to it, as I am Delivering it to you from the Bottom of my heart.”

Philadelphia Today

• The day was, like yesterday, clear and pleasant.
• A correspondent for the Pennsylvania Herald lamented “that, a few days ago, he had the curiosity to go along the wharves and count the vessels loading and unloading; and to his great mortification, found there were sixteen under British colours, discharging and taking in their cargoes, and but one solitary American, which was loading with lumber for the West Indies.”