The Genius of America by Eric Lane Page A

alone are no substitute for wise action rooted in reality. Looking back on their work, we have no way of knowing whether the framers’ lofty vision grew out of their understanding of pragmatic politics, or whether their lofty vision was articulated just to rationalize their pragmatic politics. Perhaps it is a distinction without a difference, but it certainly applies to the decision to submit the Constitution to ratification by convention in each state. Madison declared that a constitution’s legitimacy was rooted in the approval of its people. Perhaps these were lofty ideals speaking. Governor Edmund Randolph offered a more practical reality. There was little chance state legislatures would ratify a new Constitution that so reduced their power. They decided to go around the state legislatures and appeal directly to the people.
    A D IVIDED P EOPLE
    But in the fall of 1787, the people were divided. The convention had been conducted behind closed doors. The debates, which Madison recorded and we can now study, were unknown to Americans. (Madison’s notes on the convention were published more than fifty years later.) The framers had carefully argued over every clause, in private, but had done virtually nothing to share their thinking or prepare other Americans for what they had done. They had invented a new form of democracy designed to allow the people to govern themselves. But they had not explained it to the people. This certainly would not be the last time in American politics when leaders faced a backlash when they left the people out of the process.
    Most Americans favored a strengthening of the Articles of Confederation, which is what they thought the convention was doing. But they were far less certain about the proposed new government that actually emerged. This was not a mere reform but an extraordinary shift of political power from individual states to a new national government. While the framers saw this shift as the only means of protecting the liberty of Americans from the current chaos, many Americans were not convinced.
    This produced an extraordinary ratification debate—a clash of ideas, to say nothing of occasional fists, egos, self-interests, agendas and visions, on a continental scale. It was one of the most vigorously contested electoral processes in the nation’s history. “There were some fifteen hundred official delegates to the twelve state ratifying conventions, where every section of every clause and every phrase of the Constitution was raked over.” And while the voting mandate was restricted throughout the country to free adult males who owned property, several states liberalized their property ownership requirements to allow more men to vote.
    The opponents, the Anti-Federalists, understood that the proposed Constitution was favored by many of America’s most trusted citizens. To defeat or amend it would require extraordinary exposition. For more than a year the words flowed relentlessly. “Judging from the newspapers,” wrote Madison, “one would suppose that the adversaries were the most numerous and most in earnest.” (Of course, many articles in support of the new Constitution were also published, the most famous being The Federalist Papers. )
    One of the most articulate opponents, Samuel Bryan, entered the fray in Pennsylvania on October 5, 1787, and his numerous columns, under the name Centinel, were published in newspapers throughout the country. The new government, he wrote, was a means for America’s elite (defined in various ways) to impose their views on the rest of America. Through this, America would lose its democratic character, and Americans their liberty. “The proposed plan of government . . . is a most daring attempt to establish a despotic aristocracy among freemen, that the world has ever witnessed.” Despite the claims that the new government was of the people and for the people, it was too complex and, no matter where