by Ray Raphael
On the other hand, delegates were not ready to cede to Randolph and opt for multiple executives, an unconventional and unproven construct that lacked definition. What might a plural executive look like? Would it comprise the heads of separate departments, like the secretaries of finance, war, and marine in the early 1780s, each administering his own realm? That system had not received rave reviews, and the office of finance, which was key to all the rest, had been abandoned. Or would it be more like an executive council, some group of three or five or a dozen men deciding matters in concert? That system was currently in effect in Pennsylvania, where a popularly elected twelve-man council was charged with all executive functions, but this had little appeal for Pennsylvania delegates James Wilson, Robert Morris, and Gouverneur Morris, who had been trying for years to overturn it. Before even considering Randolph’s preference for a multiple-executive office, delegates would have to figure out what that meant, and even if they devised a scheme that appeared to work on paper, they would be on uncharted territory. Better just to move on and leave this thorny issue for later. Madison’s concise notes convey the tone: “Mr. Wilson’s motion for a single magistrate was postponed by common consent, the Committee [of the Whole] seeming unprepared for any decision on it.”
Seizing the moment to start anew, James Madison examined the broader picture, as he would often do over the following weeks and months. Wouldn’t it be “proper,” he asked, “before a choice should be made between a unity and plurality in the Executive, to fix the extent of the Executive authority”? What the executive was empowered to do might shed important light on this and related matters, such as who should select him/them and how long he/they should serve. Madison then proposed to imbue the executive with powers “to carry into execution the national laws” and “to appoint offices in cases not otherwise provided for.” With little dissent, the delegations agreed. Executive powers were to be derived from the legislature, save only for some unnamed appointments “not otherwise provided for.”
This loose definition clarified little, but because executive powers would be minimal, delegates found it easier to broach troublesome issues. A single executive with limited and derivative power would not be that dangerous after all. Perhaps he could remain in office longer, and his selection, although still important, was not quite so pivotal as before.
In any case, delegates willingly moved on to the blank left in Randolph’s opening outline: “for the term of ___ years.” Wilson opened the bidding with three years, and Charles Pinckney countered with seven. Sherman, for a change, agreed with Wilson. George Mason argued “for seven years at least” with one term only, but Gunning Bedford of Delaware warned against seven, since the nation might be “saddled” with a first magistrate who was not up for the job. Three and seven were the only numbers presented. The day was wearing on. Debate was limited. On a hasty vote, the longer term prevailed by five states to four, with one divided.
Late in the afternoon, delegates turned their attention to the manner in which the executive(s) would be chosen. Sherman argued in favor of appointment by the national legislature, as suggested in Randolph’s initial draft, but then James Wilson shocked the convention by raising the possibility of election by the people—a very radical concept in the minds of most men in the room. That Wilson would be the one to offer this alternative was indeed strange, for he was no great friend of the masses. In 1779, Philadelphians had boiled into a rage at Robert Morris and other “monopolizers,” whom they accused of withholding scarce goods to drive up prices. An angry crowd came after Morris, his lawyer Wilson, and a few of their gentry friends, who barricaded themselves within Wilson’s three-story brick house and fired into the throng, killing five people. Then, in the aftermath of the infamous Battle of Fort Wilson (as it has been called ever since), Wilson cringed in the attic of Morris’s country mansion to escape the wrath of the populace. Wilson had real and concrete reasons to fear the unfettered power of the people, yet theoretically, as an astute lawyer and legal scholar, he understood that all republican government must be built upon the construct of popular sovereignty. More than most others in the room, Wilson allowed reason to trump his personal inclinations, and that allowed him to become the convention’s most outspoken proponent of popular elections. He alone among the delegates believed that representatives, senators, and the president should all be elected directly by the people. If a national government was to possess “vigorous authority,” he reasoned, its power must “flow immediately from the legitimate source of all authority, … the people at large.”4
Even Wilson, however, admitted that election by the people was “chimerical,” since it was unlikely to win the support of other delegates. Mason, like Wilson, favored the idea in theory but pronounced it “impracticable.” These two, Wilson and Mason, were the only delegates who even flirted with democratic election of the executive in this discussion. John Rutledge, on the other extreme, argued that the executive should be selected by the upper house of the legislature, because it was furthest removed from the people.
Wilson’s suggestion of popular elections, and its summary rejection, revealed a seemingly insurmountable dilemma. All delegates wanted the government they created to be philosophically grounded in the people, yet not one of them wished to place the operations of that government under the people’s direct control. So who else, if not the people, should select the executive(s)? Not the state legislatures; that would highlight regional jealousies, inhibit national allegiances, and open the new government to the same sorts of allegedly pernicious schemes currently under consideration in several states, things like paper money and debtor relief. The national legislature was the only other viable body, but as Wilson aptly observed, and several of his colleagues agreed, executive(s) chosen by the legislature could not be expected to remain independent of it.
This matter would not be settled in a few brief moments in the late afternoon, any more than the matter of a single versus a plural executive. The meeting adjourned for the day. It would be a long summer.
The second day, June 2, opened with a surprise. James Wilson announced he had solved the delegates’ dilemma. From Madison’s notes:
Mr. WILSON made the following motion, to be substituted for the mode proposed by Mr. Randolph’s resolution, “that the Executive Magistracy shall be elected in the following manner: That the States be divided into districts: & that the persons qualified to vote in each district for members of the first branch of the national Legislature elect ___ members for their respective districts to be electors of the Executive magistracy, that the said Electors of the Executive magistracy meet at ___ and they or any ___ of them so met shall proceed to elect by ballot, but not out of their own body ___ person in whom the Executive authority of the national Government shall be vested.”
Even in embryonic form, we can recognize in Wilson’s innovative proposal that strange institution we know today as the Electoral College. The concept was simple, even if the mechanisms were not. The people would remain in the picture, but others would make the final choice. Wilson was clearly excited by his ingenious solution.
Others, though, were not so taken. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts doubted “that the people ought to act directly even in the choice of electors, being too little informed of personal characters in large districts, and liable to deceptions.” This comment surprised nobody. Two days earlier, Gerry had even opposed popular election of members of the lower house. This political veteran of Revolutionary struggles, an early proponent of independence who had served often and vigorously in the Continental Congress, confessed then he had been “too republican heretofore,” but he “had been taught by experience the danger of the levelling spirit” by “the popular clamour in Massts.”
Only one other delegate bothered to comment on Wilson’s scheme. Hugh Williamson of North Carolina “could see no advantage in the introduction of Electors chosen by the people who would stand in the same relation to them as the State Legislatures, whilst the expedien
t would be attended with great trouble and expence.” This simple rebuttal seemed to suffice. Wilson’s measure suffered a resounding defeat, with only his own Pennsylvania delegation, along with that of neighboring Maryland, voting for it.
So Wilson’s “electors” would not choose the executive(s). Nor would the state legislatures, since the convention was conceived in large measure to take power from those bodies. Nor would the people themselves, whom the illustrious delegates simply did not trust. The last option standing was the one first suggested in Randolph’s draft. Without further ado, delegates voted “on the question for electing the Executive by the national Legislature for the term of seven years.” This time the long-term option, coupled with the simplest method of selection, passed decisively, 8 to 2; again, Pennsylvania and Maryland were the sole dissenters.
The selection of the executive(s) by the national legislature, as Wilson pointed out, placed the executive office in a subservient relationship, which gave the lie to the delegates’ frequent calls throughout the convention for independent branches of government. All these learned men were familiar with the concept of separation of powers, put forth by “the celebrated Montesquieu,” as Edmund Randolph referred to the French author of The Spirit of the Laws. As a body, they agreed with Montesquieu’s precept that republican government depended on the diffusion of authority, yet in this case they left Montesquieu by the wayside. Their willingness to do so speaks to the continued strength of a “tradition” they had pioneered in their governmental and quasi-governmental bodies before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. Since 1774, within their confederation, Congress was the government. The executives in eight of the thirteen states remained under the sway of the legislatures that appointed them. Although delegates knew that legislative rule by committee was a major factor in the breakdown of government, that mode of governing had come to feel familiar. A handy default, it would remain in the plan unless supplanted by some better scheme.
Now that both the manner of selection of the executive(s) and his/ their term in office seemed settled, Benjamin Franklin thought it might be time to address a matter very much on his mind: executive compensation. Given the history of executive abuse in colonial times, all agreed that the office should not be used for private gain. Randolph’s seventh resolution had provided a reasonable safeguard—the executive(s) would receive a “fixed compensation for the services rendered,” and that amount could not be altered during his/their term in office—but Franklin favored a tougher stance. The executive(s), he proposed, “shall receive no salary, stipend fee or reward whatsoever for their services.” He had prepared in advance a lengthy paper defending his motion, and pleading infirmity, he asked James Wilson, his colleague from Pennsylvania, to read it in his stead. As Wilson did so, delegates no doubt cast occasional glances toward the author himself, the eldest of all elder statesmen, his voice too weak to talk at length but with a mind as clear as any. The Doctor, as people respectfully and affectionately called him, had a lifetime of experience in the affairs of the world, including more proximity to real power—the seats of European empires—than all the rest combined.
Franklin’s paper opened with a rhetorical question: Who would be attracted to an executive office that was not only a “post of honour” but also a “place for profit”? To which he answered, “It will not be the wise and moderate; the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits. These will thrust themselves into your Government and be your rulers.” Such men would soon find ways to turn their “fixed” salaries into more lucrative pay. “Reasons will never be wanting for proposed augmentations. And there will always be a party for giving more to the rulers, that the rulers may be able in return to give more to them.” He then continued this dismal train of thought to its logical conclusion:
There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever. It will be said, that we don’t propose to establish Kings. I know it. But there is a natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government. It sometimes relieves them from Aristocratic domination. They had rather have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more of the appearance of equality among citizens, and that they like. I am apprehensive therefore, perhaps too apprehensive, that the Government of these States, may in future times, end in a Monarchy. But this catastrophe I think may be long delayed, if in our proposed system we do not sow the seeds of contention, faction & tumult, by making our posts of honor, places of profit.
Delegates listened attentively as Franklin, via Wilson, played the monarchy card, but they did not respond. “No debate ensued,” Madison wrote, “and the proposition was postponed for the consideration of the members. It was treated with great respect, but rather for the author of it, than from any apparent conviction of its expediency or practicability.” Judging by the lack of attention to the matter, not just at this moment but throughout the summer as well, we can infer that most delegates believed Randolph’s idea of a fixed compensation would suffice. Still, Franklin’s speech was a rallying cry for disinterested governance. Virtue, not avarice and ambition, must motivate the new rulers, and the job of the convention was to provide a framework whereby this would happen.
With Franklin’s sermon over, work resumed. Having decided the executive(s) would serve for seven years—and this at a time when annual elections were the norm—delegates naturally wanted to devise a plan whereby a man (or men) who proved inadequate could be removed from office before his/their term had expired. The most logical body to impeach the executive(s) was the national legislature that had appointed him/them. John Dickinson, whose Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania was the first Revolutionary must-read back in 1767, thought impeachment should be initiated with the state legislatures to keep state governments involved, but nobody else agreed. The rest reverted to the fallback option, allowing the national legislature to impeach the executive(s) for “mal-practice or neglect of duty.”
That was one way to preclude an executive from becoming a monarch. There was a more direct way as well: disallowing a second term. This passed seven states to two, with Pennsylvania divided.
With the executive office now tightly circumscribed, John Rutledge and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina moved once again that the executive should be “one person.” Since he exercised only minimal powers, he served but a single term, and he could be removed from office for no more than “neglect of duty,” the dangers of investing executive power in a single individual had been minimized. The practical expediency of a unified executive, meanwhile, was never even challenged. It was a cut-and-dried case, Rutledge and Pinckney believed. They “supposed the reasons to be so obvious & conclusive in favor of one [executive] that no member would oppose the motion.”
No member except Edmund Randolph, that is. Virginia’s leading delegate took immediate offense to the presumptuous none-dare-oppose-us declaration of the South Carolinians. Even in Madison’s flat prose, the passion comes through:
Mr. RANDOLPH opposed it with great earnestness, declaring that he should not do justice to the Country which sent him if he were silently to suffer the establishment of a unity in the Executive department. He felt an opposition to it which he believed he should continue to feel as long as he lived.
Substantively, Randolph’s arguments were not exactly overpowering. A single executive, he conjectured, would appoint only people “near the center of the community” to serve in the government. Offering neither evidence nor logical reasoning, he stated that three executives would be “equally competent to all the objects of the department,” but his argument from a political slant bore some weight. “The permanent temper of the people was adverse to the very semblance of Monarchy,” so “the necessary confidence would never be reposed in a single Magistrate.” Framers beware: a single
executive could fuel the flames of discontent and doom the entire project.
So ended day 2. If the nation were to have a single executive, it would have to be against the strong advice and ardent wishes of the chief executive of its largest state.
On Sunday, the Sabbath, the delegates rested.
Come Monday, June 4, they resumed without missing a beat. Still on the table was the motion for a single executive, and still damping down the enthusiasm was Edmund Randolph’s declaration that this was not only wrongheaded but dangerous and his views on the matter were forever set.
Nobody jumped to Randolph’s side, while several delegates spoke against him. Multiple executives would lead to “uncontrouled, continued, & violent animosities.” Each would protect the interests of the region he represented, jeopardizing the good of the whole. In “military matters,” three heads instead of one would prove “particularly mischievous.” Addressing Randolph’s supposition that monarchical connotations would make the plan a hard sell, James Wilson saw “no evidence of the alleged antipathy of the people.” As confirmation, he marshaled forth the new state constitutions, which provided for a single chief executive in one form or another. The analogy was weak—people who did not fear a king of South Carolina might well fear a king of the United States—but it still made Randolph’s argument appear conjectural.
A majority view, albeit not a consensus, seemed to be coalescing. The limitations imposed on the executive had lessened the trepidation that the man holding that office would turn into a tyrant. Further, this person would not possess the critical “power of war and peace,” which several delegates had vigorously opposed. So when the matter finally came to a vote, seven states favored a single chief executive, while three states opposed the idea—a clear victory although short of a landslide. One key state, Virginia, was hotly contested. George Mason, who still resisted, was absent, but so was George Wythe, a proponent. These two canceled each other out. Edmund Randolph was joined in opposition by John Blair, while James Madison, who had come to support a single executive, was joined by James McClurg and, yes, George Washington. The sitting president of the convention and odds-on favorite to become the nation’s first chief executive cast the deciding vote within the Virginia delegation. Should the job ever be offered to him, and should he accept, he would exercise executive authority alone, not with others.
