Image Gateway: September 17, 1787
“Signing of the Constitution” by Howard Chandler Christy (1940). View this key to the figures in the painting, which hangs in the US Capitol. Where is John Dickinson?
James Madison in 1783 (age 32) (Library of Congress)
Original US Constitution (A Summary)
- Nearly 4,500 words
- Seven articles
- Article I –Legislative
- Article II –Executive
- Article III –Judiciary
- Article IV –States
- Article V –Amendments
- Article VI –Authority
- Article VII –Ratification
- One fundamental charter
“Every word … decides a question between power & liberty.”
–James Madison, January 18, 1792
Final engrossed copy of the Constitution, September 17, 1787
Sample errors in the final text, by clerk Jacob Shallus
“Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honours, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the Charter; let it be brought forth placed on the Divine Law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.”
–Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Timeline: Forging a Constitutional Republic
- 1775 Lexington & Concord // Second Continental Congress
- 1776 Paine’s Common Sense // State constitutions
- 1776 Declaration of Independence
- 1781 Articles of Confederation
- 1781 Battle of Yorktown
- 1783 Treaty of Paris // Dickinson College charter
- 1786 Shays’ Rebellion
- 1787 Constitutional Convention // Founders’ Constitution
- 1789 Washington inaugurated in New York
Critical Period
“The evils issuing from these sources [of state legislative instability and majoritarian threats to individual liberty], contributed more to that uneasiness which produced the Convention, and prepared the public mind for a general reform, than those which accrued to our national character and interest from the inadequacy of the Confederation to its immediate objects.” (James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, October 24. 1787)
Discussion Questions
- During the 1780s, why did Madison (and so many other American leaders) seem more worried about signs of broken democracy at the state level than about the obvious deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation?
- Why did the debate about states and their “excesses of democracy” become such an existential crisis for the revolutionary ideology of republicanism?
Madison’s List of 11 Vices of the US political system
Handouts
