Essay 6-C: The Ratification Debate Over The Constitution and Founding Documents

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

Americans have done many political things in new and unique ways from their very beginning. When establishing independence, they decided that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” After declaring independence, most of the original states decided that written Declarations of Rights – clearly delineating the legitimate powers and limits of governments – were essential characteristics of republican constitutions. When framing the new Federal Constitution in 1787, they decided this should be done by delegates selected by the legislatures of each state. But perhaps most unique of all was the manner in which the new Federal Constitution was to be ratified. It was to be ratified in a manner that was not only federal (that is, on a state-by-state basis) but also involving a unique democratic quality.

The democratic mode of ratification meant, first of all, that the American people were invited to discuss, deliberate upon, and debate the Constitution after it was drafted by the framers at Philadelphia in 1787. In what is known as the “out of doors” debates over ratification, people met and debated the Constitution in public places, private homes, churches – even on street corners when someone would read aloud newspaper essays supporting or opposing ratification. Federalist and Antifederalist essayists alike usually introduced their first essays with a call to the American people to carefully consider the proposed Constitution and its possible effects on domestic stability, national security, and the rights and liberties that had been fought for during the Revolution. As New York Antifederalist Brutus wrote in his first essay, “The most important question that was ever proposed to your decision, or to the decision of any people under heaven, is before you.” And Publius (Alexander Hamilton) wrote in The Federalist No. 1:

[I]t seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. … [A] wrong election of the part we shall act, may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

In a more formal sense – in what is called the “Indoors” debates – the democratic mode of approving the Constitution meant that it must be ratified not by state legislatures (as had been the case with the Articles of Confederation) but by the people themselves through popularly elected delegates to their respective state ratifying conventions. This idea was struck upon by a young James Madison, who thought it wrong that the Virginia state constitution of 1776 was ratified not by the people of the state but by their state legislature. Madison (who served in the legislature that drafted the Virginia constitution) found this problematic because the authority of all constitutions ought to rest upon the consent of the people themselves. The same held true for the proposed Federal Constitution in 1787: rather than be approved by Congress, it ought to be ratified by state conventions consisting of delegates elected by the people themselves. To this end, elections were held in each state (including, eventually, Rhode Island) for delegates to attend state ratifying conventions. Some state conventions approved the Constitution rather quickly (three days in Delaware, three weeks in Pennsylvania, and a week in New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut). In the key states of Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, opponents to the Constitution initially outnumbered supporters, and these conventions spawned hotly contested debates as delegates argued over nearly every aspect of the proposed Constitution. Eventually, New Hampshire was the ninth state to ratify, but only by a vote of 57 delegates for ratification, and 47 opposed.

So why were these state ratification debates so important? For one, as mentioned earlier, it was proof that a people could freely deliberate upon and choose its own Constitution without relying on “accident and force.” Second, the conventions brought together people of diverse political positions and allowed for concerns to be freely expressed, promoting a greater understanding of the views of both Federalists and Antifederalists. In this sense, the views of both Federalists and Antifederalists make up what one might call the American Constitutional Mind. This is why James Madison himself – the Father of the Constitution – considered the state ratification debates so important to understanding the meaning of the Constitution. “[W]hatever veneration might be entertained for the body of men who formed our Constitution,” Madison said, the sense of that body could never be regarded as the oracular guide in expounding the Constitution. As the instrument came from them, it was nothing more than the draft of a plan, nothing but a dead letter, until life and validity were breathed into it by the voice of the people, speaking through the several State Conventions. If we were to look, therefore, for the meaning of the instrument beyond the face of the instrument, we must look for it, not in the General Convention, which proposed, but in the State Conventions, which accepted and ratified the Constitution.

Christopher Burkett is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ashland University and Academic Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program and Academies. He is editor of Ashbrook’s 50 Core American Documents, and has written on the American Founding, Progressivism, and American Foreign Policy. He holds a B.A. from Ashland University, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Dallas.

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