CHAPTER III.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION INTENDED NATIONALITY 51

Convention called to amend the articles of Confederacy--First resolution passed: the government should be supreme and national--The national plan offered by the Virginia delegation preferred and considered--The New Jersey plan of a confederacy of the States with coercive power to compel obedience--Hamilton’s plan--The Virginia plan again adopted. The United States adopted as the title--Resolutions passed that there should be two branches of the legislature, the first to be chosen by the people--Long controversy as to representation in Senate, settled by an equal representation of the States, the vote to be per capita--This compromise of representation in Senate does not affect the supremacy of the granted powers--Resolution of Elbridge Gerry referring the plan of a _national_ government to the committee of detail unanimously passed--Government called national in many of the referred votes--Committee of detail report votes passed; the preamble declaring the government to be for posterity--Article against treason again debated and passed unanimously--Constitution committed to committee of style and arrangement--New draft considered at length, adopted, and signed by delegates--Diversity of opinion as to durability, no suggestion that a State had a right to leave the Union--Yates and Lansing left convention because the Constitution made a national government--Satisfaction with it of Southern States--Washington’s service--Franklin’s happy speech at close--George Mason did not sign, though efficient in making it--Constitution submitted by State legislatures in each State to a convention of the people--Its acceptance considered in long sessions of the conventions held in the several States--Everywhere announced as a national government--Ratified as national in Massachusetts and Virginia--Unanimous opinion of convention of New York of its perpetuity--Amendments of Constitution, passed to quiet apprehension as to its excessive powers--Early laws show a liberal construction of the powers of the government--The right of individuals to sue States taken away, but jurisdiction over States and disputes between States retained--Insurrection in Pennsylvania against excise law suppressed--Opinion of Washington as to power of government--Alien and sedition laws passed.