The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (135 page)

30
To sleep
1787–90

The next day Washington wrote Lafayette regarding the new Constitution, “It is now a child of fortune, to be fostered by some and buffeted by others. What will be the general opinion on, or the reception of it, is not for me to decide, nor shall I say any thing for or against it. If it is good I suppose it will work its way good, if bad it will recoil on the framers.”

Washington forecast accurately. The infant Constitution received both cuffs and caresses. The cuffs came from advocates of state authority who disliked yielding power to the central government, from radical democrats who saw insufficient guarantees of the people’s rights, and from assorted others who were, for one reason or another, attached to the status quo. Sam Adams had trouble getting past the first words of the preamble—“We, the People”—which he thought should have been, “We, the States.” Said Adams, “As I enter the building I stumble at the threshold.” Elbridge Gerry explained his refusal to sign at Philadelphia: “The constitution has few federal features, but is rather a system of national government.” This was precisely what worried another New England Antifederalist (as the opponents of the Constitution came to be called): “The vast continent of America cannot be long subjected to a democracy if consolidated into one government. You might as well attempt to rule Hell by prayer.” A Pennsylvanian, noting that the proposed Constitution would amplify the power of government, warned, “The natural course of power is to make the many the slaves to the few.” A South Carolina Antifederalist demanded of his audience, “What have you been contending for these ten years? Liberty! What is liberty? The power of governing yourselves! If you adopt this constitution, have you the power?” To which the audience thundered, “No!” Another South Carolinian recorded the reception of the proposed charter in the backcountry: “The people had a coffin painted black, which, borne in funeral procession, was solemnly buried, as an emblem of the dissolution and interment of public liberty…. They feel that they are the very men, who, as mere militia, half-armed and half-clothed, have fought and defeated the British regulars in sundry encounters. They think that after having disputed and gained the laurel under the banners of liberty, now, that they are likely to be robbed both of the honour and the fruits of it.”

Proponents of the Constitution rallied to its defense. The most important body of argument in favor of the new government was a series of essays by Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay entitled
The Federalist
. Perhaps inevitably, the affirmative case was more complicated than the negative (the opponents simply had to shout “Liberty!”); whether from this cause or some other, the
Federalist
papers were complex and closely reasoned, and together provided a thoughtful introduction to the theory of constitutional government. The most telling installment may have been the tenth, in which Madison countered the Antifederalist argument that the federal government would be intrinsically less democratic than the state governments. In fact, just the opposite was true, Madison asserted.

“The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression.” A government comprising more people would be safer. “Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.”

The morning
after the convention adjourned, the Pennsylvania Assembly reclaimed its quarters in the State House. Franklin, in his dual role as Pennsylvania president and senior delegate to the Constitutional convention, expressed his “very great satisfaction” at presenting the convention’s handiwork to the people of Pennsylvania for approval. He added his expectation that the Constitution would produce “happy effects to this commonwealth, as well as to every other of the United States.” Further happy effects for Pennsylvania, he judged, would follow from locating the new federal government in Pennsylvania. To this end, and pursuant to the clause in the Constitution about a federal district, he recommended that Pennsylvania offer the new government one hundred square miles for such a district. (Pennsylvania agreed, but the national politics of ratification eventually resulted in the federal district’s being carved out of Maryland and Virginia.) Beyond his formal recommendation, Franklin conspired in lifting the veil of secrecy surrounding the convention far enough to smuggle out his closing speech, which became a powerful argument in favor of the Constitution. Many people assumed that Franklin was the primary author of the proposed charter; his prestige added to its momentum.

It also shielded him from Antifederalist criticism. In Pennsylvania the politics of ratification was complicated by the preexisting dissension over the state constitution. Confusingly—but not illogically, given their populist predilections—most Constitutionalists in Pennsylvania politics adopted an anti-Constitutionalist position vis-à-vis the proposed national
government, while most Pennsylvania anti-Constitutionalists (or Republicans) embraced the federal Constitution. Pennsylvania Antifederalists bitterly attacked the (federal) Constitution as a plot by Robert Morris and his rich friends to subvert the states and the people, the better to line their own pockets. Yet Franklin, despite his support for the Constitution, emerged largely untouched. There was good political reason for this, of course, namely, the recognition—in the words of one Antifederalist piece—that Franklin was “highly reverenced by all the people.” To the extent that Franklin’s federalism required explaining away by the Antifederalists, it was attributed to the “weakness and indecision attendant on old age.”

The Antifederalists employed other tactics instead. When ballots were circulated for delegates to the Pennsylvania convention that would decide for or against ratification, Antifederalist Constitutionalists listed Franklin’s name on their ticket, against his wishes. Antifederalists in other states turned Franklin’s words against him. “Doctor Franklin’s concluding speech, which you will meet with in one of the papers herewith enclosed,” Madison wrote to Washington from New York, “is both mutilated and adulterated so as to change both the form and the spirit of it.”

In Pennsylvania the Antifederalist efforts failed fairly quickly. The state convention met in November, and though the Antifederalists managed to stall a final vote till the following month, on December 12 forty-six members voted in favor of the Constitution, against twenty-three opposed. That afternoon a gang of celebrating sailors and shipbuilders (two groups that stood to benefit from improved commerce under the new federal government) put a boat on a wagon and hauled it through the streets of Philadelphia, shouting, “Three and twenty fathoms, foul bottom”—referring to the negative votes—and “Six and forty fathoms, safe anchorage!”

Pennsylvania’s approval enhanced the Constitution’s prospects but hardly guaranteed them. Ratification in February 1788 by Massachusetts (where Sam Adams, after stumbling at the threshold, picked himself up and endorsed the new charter) left the ratifiers three states shy of the nine specified for the Constitution to take effect. More troubling than the shortfall—which seemed almost certain to be made good—was the identity of two of the holdouts, New York and Virginia. If New York remained aloof, New England would be as cut off from the rest of America as it would have been during the Revolutionary War had
Burgoyne’s expedition succeeded. And an American union was hard to imagine without Virginia, the home of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and the heart of the south.

Franklin entered the fray at a critical moment. In April he wrote a piece for the
Federal Gazette
reminding readers that even the most inspired instance of constitution-writing in all of history had come under harsh attack. When Moses descended from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments under his arm, had not the Israelites resisted? The Talmud told how jealous factions resented Moses and the laws he brought, saying Israel had freed itself from bondage under Pharaoh; should it now accept slavery at the hands of Moses? Franklin recognized that he was treading on treacherous, even blasphemous ground. “I beg I may not be understood to infer that our General Convention was divinely inspired when it formed the new federal Constitution, merely because that Constitution has been unreasonably and vehemently opposed.” Yet, as he had said in the convention, he could not help thinking the Deity had something to do with the project. “I must own I have so much faith in the general government of the world by
Providence
that I can hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance to the welfare of millions now existing, and to exist in the posterity of a great nation, should be suffered to pass without being in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent Ruler.”

Aided by Franklin’s argument, Virginia’s convention ratified in the early summer of 1788. Virginia’s approval gave heart to New York Federalists, including the merchants of New York City, who threatened secession by their city from the state if the state failed to ratify. This tipped the balance in favor of the Constitution.

Although some final vote counting remained, on the twelfth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Federalists of Philadelphia held a grand celebration. A ship conveniently called the
Rising Sun
was anchored in the Delaware; at sunrise on the Fourth of July it fired a cannon salute to the new government and the city that gave it birth. An elaborate procession began at eight o’clock, headed by the Light Horse Troop and including units representing “Independence,” the “Alliance with France,” and the “New Era.” State and local officials marched, as did members of every conceivable guild in the city.

The place of highest honor was reserved for “His Excellency the President.” Unfortunately, Franklin’s stone kept him home that day, although he may have stirred to the sidewalk to see the procession turn onto Market Street just west of his house, and he almost certainly heard
the music and singing. The printers’ guild had put a press on a cart, and as it rolled along, those tending the press struck off and distributed the lyrics of a song written for the occasion by Philadelphia’s most famous printer, President Franklin himself.

Ratification
of the Constitution marked the end of the Revolutionary era in American history, and a most fitting climax to Franklin’s public life. The previous October the Pennsylvania Assembly had reelected him again. He had intended to retire after his second term but lacked the resolve. “I must own that it is no small pleasure to me, and I suppose it will give my sister pleasure,” he wrote Jane Mecom the week after his reelection, “that after such a long trial of me, I should be elected a third time by my fellow citizens, without a dissenting vote but my own. This universal and unbounded confidence of a whole people flatters my vanity much more than a peerage could do.”