during the 1780s American newspapers warned that the nation's situation had grown quote critical and dangerous according to one from New York and what they meant was that the states they were behaving like 13 ungovernable Nations all pursuing their own trade regulations and their own foreign policies Henry Knox a famous Bookseller from Boston and a celebrated Revolutionary War General was quoted as saying that our present federal government meaning the article is Confederation is quote is a name a shadow without power or effect and such concerns were leading Now American political leaders to begin revising their assessment of the Republic for example James Madison believed that it was time to create a new national government that would repair quote The Vices of the political system and quote decide forever the fate of Republican government and even people like Alexander Hamilton began urging that a national gathering of delegates needed to be convened in order to give full Powers um to revise the Articles of Confederation this is the story of the Constitutional Convention and the formation of the United States Constitution we have today but the beginnings of our Constitution that we have today had a strange beginning a very unlikely beginning in the beginning of our story about the Constitutional Convention began here at the home of George Washington George Washington owned a sprawling Plantation that he named Mount Vernon it is today it is was located and still is located along the banks of the Potomac River just Downstream uh from the nation's capital now in 1785 George Washington opened his home to delegations from his home state of Virginia as well as the state of Maryland and the reason he did this is that Maryland and Virginia shared a common border with one another and that was the Potomac River which ran along George Washington's backyard the purpose of this meeting among these delegates from Virginia and uh Maryland was for the two sides to sit down and draw up a common trade laws amongst one another to kind of free up trade on the Potomac River which at this point had ground to a halt because of the state sovereignty associated with the Articles of Confederation now what's interesting about this conference is that no one was expecting much but because Washington lent his Aid and lent his influence to the conference the conference was a success and both sides went back to their respective State legislatures and helped usher in trade laws that had the effect of freeing up trade between the states of Maryland and Virginia now the music the reason I mentioned the Mount Vernon conference is that this got people in the country thinking uh if we could have success at a small level like this with two states the idea then became perhaps we could try something like what's happened at Mount Vernon on a national level and so as a result of the Mount Vernon conference the ball began to roll uh the movement began to change the Articles of Confederation and so a call went out to the individual states and that call came from Alexander Hamilton who I mentioned earlier who was already urging a national gathering of delegates to be given full powers to revise the Articles of Confederation and in 1786 that's exactly what Hamilton got an Annapolis convention was called for and convened in Annapolis Maryland uh in the summer of 1786 and all of the states were invited to send delegates to this convention however only five of them showed up only five delegations from five states appeared at the Annapolis convention now this still shows you how guarded these states are about their sovereignty and about their power and any convention that was proposing the idea to revise the Articles of Confederation to change them to strengthen them well something that a lot of these states were simply not willing to entertain at least not yet so the Annapolis convention was ultimately a failure but it was an important step towards the Constitutional Convention in the ultimate formation of the U.S Constitution because the the last thing this convention agreed to do was try to convince other states over the next year to send representatives to another convention that they were going to hold in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in the summer of 1787. now that Philadelphia Convention is the convention we know today as the Constitutional Convention and when that convention was first conveyed or first called for the agenda on for the convention would be to uh just amend the Articles of Confederation and strengthen them a little bit however when that Philadelphia Convention met in the summer of 1787 the situation had changed in fact when that convention began in the summer of 1787 every single state sent a delegation except for Rhode Island your question to who didn't show up is always going to be Rhode Island at this point now that Philadelphia Convention that we know is the Constitutional Convention we're going to talk about that in just a second but to fill in the Gap we need to explain what happened how did we go from five states showing up at the Annapolis convention to 12 of the 13 states sending delegations to a Philadelphia Convention just a year later in addition to so many more States showing up to the Philadelphia Convention the agenda had actually changed as well the agenda at the Philadelphia Convention was not going to be to amend the Articles or strengthen the Articles the agenda was going to be to create a new government so the question becomes what happened and of course what happened was a little Rebellion a little Rebellion that goes by the name of Shay's Rebellion now Shay's Rebellion it really was not a very uh you know a large Rebellion it probably shouldn't have had an effect on much but it did and that's because of the timing of it so let me explain what Shay's rebellion was Shay's rebellion was a rebellion in Western Massachusetts that was uh led by angry farmers in Western Massachusetts who banded together and created a really a ragtag army of unruly Farmers that included a 39 year old gentleman by the name of Daniel Shays who was a distinguished War veteran of the Revolutionary War these farmers were upset that their Farms were being foreclosed upon because they no longer were able to pay back their mortgage payments to Banks now why was that happening well it was happening because during the war of independence a lot of these Farmers on the Western frontier had taken out bank loans to buy more land to grow more Commodities because during the war of independence their Commodities were in high demand and the prices were then high they got greedy they over extended themselves financially they tried to take advantage of the high prices and when the war ended and demand for their Commodities plummeted suddenly they were no longer able to make as much money as they needed to meet meet their financial obligations and so the banks began foreclosing on their Farms now in August of 1786 this ragtag Army of farmers descended upon Springfield Massachusetts um in the winter of that year in order to shut down the state courts and that's exactly what they did they were armed heavily armed um and they shut down the state courts in order to prevent the foreclosures from being approved by the courts the idea was shut down the courts foreclosures can't happen now the problem with this is that these Rebels led by Daniel Shays are these Farmers led by Daniel says are impeding the Constitutional actions of the Massachusetts state government so why does that matter well that's what we would call a rebellion and so this Rebellion which began in late August of 1786 and lasted until February of 1787 this was known as Shay's Rebellion now ultimately 4 400 militiamen from the state government were required to respond to this Rebellion who ended up scattering the debtor army with a single Cannon blast that left four Farmers dead and a bunch more wounded uh Daniel Shays himself actually fled the Vermont and several Rebels were arrested and two of them were even hanged now the rebels nevertheless earned a victory of sorts because the Massachusetts state legislature agreed to eliminate some of their taxes and fees but here's the thing about Shay's Rebellion news of Shay's Rebellion sent shock waves through the nation for example in Massachusetts Abigail Adams who is the wife of future President John Adams She dismissed Shays as followers as uh and his followers as ignorant Restless Desperados without conscience or principles that's a quote from Abigail and even George Washington was equally concerned for example he said that in the United States we needed quote a government by which Our Lives Liberty and properties will be secured unless an alternative could be found to the weak Confederation government quote Anarchy and confusion would inevitably ensue now the problem here with Shay's Rebellion is that when it occurred it it exposed the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation um if this was to occur today the federal government would respond to an Insurrection like it like this or Rebellion by sending in the National Guard but we didn't have a National Guard back then we didn't have an army and we didn't have an army to deal with this internal disturbance because the national government couldn't tax so it couldn't tax it couldn't raise an army and fund an army and that meant then that we were a nation on the verge of being ripped apart and a lot of people believed Shea's rebellion was simply the beginning of what was going to be a slow eroding of the Republic from within and you can see George Washington's concern about this uh concept when he was writing to his friend Henry Lee during the rebellion in which he said that you talk good sir of employing influence to appease the present to molts in Massachusetts but I do not know where that influence is to be found or if it's even attainable that it would be a proper remedy for the disorders influence is not government Washington said it it let us have a government by which Our Lives Liberties and properties will be secure or let us know the worst of it at once Shay's Rebellion really frightened people uh there was a collective shiver really that passed through the entire country but more importantly it passed through what John Jay said later was the better kind of people and what he meant by that was it was the really the rich right and the well-born that truly feared Shay's Rebellion uh and a repeat of it and a repeat and a repeat and a repeat many among that class of Americans like George Washington uh they believed that the nation was tottering and that the time was now here to empower a national government to bring about social order as well as economic stability and it was shae's Rebellion then that resulted in so many states selling sending delegations to the Philadelphia Convention in the summer of 1787. it was also what changed the agenda the agenda now at this convention was going to be not revising the Articles of Confederation the agenda was now going to actually be creating a new government and a brand new Constitution and so in the wake of Shay's Rebellion uh you know it was clear to everyone that the crisis had now arrived and in 1787 the Confederation Congress responded by calling for a special Federal convention together in the East room of Philadelphia state house uh that building is now known today as Independence Hall uh this convention that the Congress was calling for this would be the Philadelphia Convention this would be the Constitutional Convention and again all of the state sent delegates except for the State of Rhode Island now the delegates would be meeting in the same room right the same building and the same room that the Declaration of Independence had been debated and signed which gave the convention I think added significance right now the convention met uh beginning on May 25th 1787 and they met for five hours a day six days a week throughout the summer of 1787. and although the states appointed 55 total delegates there were never that many in actual attendance you know some of them quit and discussed others were distracted by other priorities uh yet after 15 weeks of deliberations ultimately 39 delegates signed this new Federal Constitution on September 17th 8 1787 only three of the delegates refused the sign now the people that formed this constitution the 39 delegates that I mentioned that were there the whole time and did all of the the bulk of the work they're known today as the framers of the United States Constitution and I just want to speak about the framers a little bit because they're a very important group obviously in American history now the framers of the Constitution were not marginal or peripheral people in the United States they they did not lead typical lives uh they were leaders at the very center of a national story and they wielded tremendous power um now these framers were of course all men they were all white they were all rich uh some of them were slave holders especially those delegations from the southern states some of them were Merchants especially those from the more Northeastern states but nearly two-thirds of them had a formal college education which was unprecedented for the 1780s in the 1780s very very few people had College educations and here at this critical moment of our nation's history we had a room full of people that nearly two-thirds of them had a formal college education it's a very interesting Dynamic involved with them now as I mentioned they were not typical or uh you know lived lives they they weren't typical of the American population as a whole but I do have to admit that they were nothing like the political leadership that existed back in England or anywhere else in Europe in fact most of these people would have absolutely languished an obscurity if we had not rebelled and become an independent nation they would have languished in obscurity in England or in France and all of them had risen to their position of power and Leadership because of the pressures and and the extendencies of the American Revolution their leadership was born in The Crucible of Revolution and War now among them there was no titled or hereditary era socracy that existed among them nor anywhere in America that could have actually blocked these people from becoming the leadership of the country yet there was no full-blown Democratic culture yet in the United States that wouldn't come until the 1830s so there was no full-blown Democratic culture that could have uh blunted uh their elitist Edge and and so it's interesting to think about them then is that they were in many respects of this country's first and only aristocracy now in spite of recent efforts over the last few uh decades and generations to defame these people and to injure their standing in the pantheons of American History uh they were by any informed and fair-minded standard the greatest generation of political talent in American history um now over the years I've as I've studied the founders for my courses and for my uh academic Pursuits uh I've I've developed some some themes about the founders that I would like to impart to you uh now or or about the framers uh number one their achievement here in Philadelphia was a collective Enterprise uh it succeeded because of their diversity and personalities and ideologies not in spite of them and their interactions with one another in their juxtapositions with one another created here in Philadelphia a dynamic form of critical balance that was sorely needed I think at this critical moment of their American history now their imperfections their fall abilities their excesses their eccentrices all of those things worked to check one another uh more on that later when you learn about the Federalist Paper number 10. the second theme I've developed about them is that they all knew each other personally they set together in these meetings you know they were there for six hours you know for five hours a day six days a week week throughout the entire summer so they sat together in these meetings they corresponded with one another they broke bread together they ate together they drank together they were living in the same boarding houses in Washington DC uh politics for them was a very much a face-to-face affair uh and and that meant that they were forced them to interact with one another personally even if they were locked at times in in political battles that seemed as though it was a battle to the death now this is all of course a very far cry from today's political landscape in which uh political opponents just simply sniped at each other through the media and especially on social media then that personal interaction amongst these delegates you know it brought a personal trust I think between them through this shared experience and through this intimacy and I believe that in turn helped to foster a willingness here at the convention to compromise because compromising was going to be critical to actually getting some work done here um and I think this personal interaction bred trust among them and that trust bred a willing to compromise and not willing to compromise as you'll see will be critical to creating the United States Constitution the third theme I've I think it's worth mentioning is that they managed to remove slavery from the agenda at the convention now I'm not saying they didn't debate slavery or aspects of slavery because they absolutely did but at no point at this convention was there the idea that slavery would be abolished in the United States now we can certainly certainly uh hold them to the fire for this decision they had an opportunity to try to do something about slavery they didn't but I need for y'all to understand that when they took this issue of slavery or you know the idea of abolishing it off of the table it got it allowed things to get done now of course the advantage of hindsight meaning that we know today that slavery would actually lead to the American Civil War and of course with present-day racial latitudes guiding us as a moral guide it can be very hard to give the framers credit for doing this but you should understand that they felt that the risk of doing nothing concerning slavery outweighed the prospects of success and in other words they believed creating a stronger government was the more pressing need and if the convention was going to consider abolishing slavery it wasn't gonna work uh okay the last and I think the more the most interesting of these themes that I've developed about the founders was that they were all cognizant that we today you and I yes you that you would be judging them they were aware of it uh for example Washington George Washington always fostered an image that he was a Cincinnatus and his nickname was the American Cincinnatus because you know he had resigned his Commission as a commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and returned to being a farmer and that was him kind of cultivating the image of uh Cincinnatus who was a a left off top of my head I forget it's either Greek or Roman but Cincinnatus was a farmer I think it's Greece Cincinnatus was a farmer that when Greece called upon him to go to war he put down his plowshare he picked up his sword and he went off to war and he did what needed to be done but when the war was over he put down his sword he picked up his plowshare and he went back to being a farmer that was George Washington now we can all say well that's what he wanted to do yeah that's fine but he was very much aware of how he would be regarded by Future generations and he cultivated this image and they all did this they knew that we would read about them in the future they knew that we would scrutinize everything they did here and every word they wrote they knew we would be listening to them so they posed for us they posed for posterity's sake now if we regard them today as marble men right statues these monuments these great statues that we've built to them if they are regarded today as those marble men that's because how that's how they want it to look that's what they wanted to be remembered as if they appear to you to be actors in some historical drama taking place well that's because that's how they wanted to be regarded and that's how they regarded themselves um so this means that we today right we today we are complicit uh in their achievement we're part of what they did because in many ways we today we were the audience by which they for for whom they were performing and that means that the fact that they knew we would be watching and judging them well I think that kept them on their best behavior anyway these are the framers of the U.S Constitution obviously some of them are more important than others I want to finish by just kind of talking about some of the more important delegates to this convention and then we'll skip over to uh and then we'll start talking about the actual events of the Constitution itself so just briefly I want to finish this lecture out by talking about some of the more important delegates to the convention I'm just going to talk about four of them because they played critical roles here at the convention and the first is of course George Washington now when the convention first opened in in May of 1787 one of the first items on the agenda was to elect the officers of the convention and for the presiding officer of the convention the it was clear that George Washington would be the choice now this doesn't mean he's the president of the country he's just kind of the the face of the convention he'll sit up front he'll kind of uh he'll be the one that recognizes people from the floors so that they can speak and and he'll control the baits uh but he needed to be the president of the convention because there were a lot of people in the country that were a little worried about what this convention was going to do what type of government it would create how powerful it would be and it was important to have the most trusted person in the country George Washington at the head of it all he brought to the convention then legitimacy right and he acted as as a uh you know a a calming force over the American people uh because Washington could be trusted he'd been trusted with power before he had willingly laid that power down he could be trusted with power he could be trusted in general and if he was part of this then the idea was George Washington won't let us down he won't steer us wrong so he was a very important delegate he didn't actually you know craft or or participate in any of the debates uh he just simply set up at the front of the room made sure order was maintained recognized people from the floor and so on and so forth but that wasn't his job his job was to be the face of the convention to give it legitimacy and that's exactly what he did another important delegate to the convention was Benjamin Franklin the oldest convention or a delegate from the state of Pennsylvania now now Ben Franklin his role at the convention is he acted as kind of like a uh a cold blanket uh that would be thrown on the convention anytime things got really heated and emotional and there's going to be moments at this convention in which people are going to get downright angry at one another uh threats of violence sometimes a lot of of name calling a lot of really nasty stuff because these issues they'll be debating it's it's it was pretty hot hot button stuff you know it was pretty important stuff and there were valid concerns and so there was a lot of heated debate that took place here and Ben Franklin's role then uh was you know he he acted as a calming force over the convention anytime things got heated anytime things got emotional he always would you know crack a joke or tell a funny story and just everybody would calm down and kind of forget what they were fighting about and kind of go back to to being friends again because that's what Franklin was good at I mean Franklin was an incredibly witty person incredibly intellectual person and he was always quick with a joke always quick with a turn of phrase he was just one of these people that was really fun to be around and at the convention his role uh was to act as a calming force and he did it well another important delegate to the convention from the state of Connecticut it's a gentleman by the name of Roger Sherman now the reason Roger Sherman is an important delegate here is that there's going to be an issue that comes up at this convention that will divide the delegates so much that if they can't solve it if they can't find a compromise on it there will be no use in continuing the convention and it's going to be Roger Sherman who will negotiate the critical compromise that saved this convention and allowed it to continue and that compromise is known as the Connecticut Compromise or it's sometimes referred to as the great compromise and Roger Sherman will be the architect of it and we're going to talk about that great compromise in a little bit but the by far the most important delegate to this convention was James Madison delegate from Virginia James Madison's spin almost an entire year at his home in Virginia preparing for this convention he studied history he studied philosophy and what he did in that time is he came up with a very bold plan for a new government that was called the Virginia Plan and when the convention first opened he was going to propose this Virginia plan as the basis for a new government and a new constitution uh and that Virginia plan of government ultimately did become the blueprint for the United States Constitution we have today and so he has the nickname then as the father of the Constitution so he is by far the most important delegate to this convention the other reason that makes him important is that this convention the work it did was all done in private it was all done in secret you know they didn't let the media into the room when they had their debates they needed privacy they needed secrecy so that they could get things done so how do we know what happened here well James Madison as I mentioned he was elected as the secretary of the convention and that meant that he would take notes on everything that was said here and he did a phenomenal job just an excellent secretary he pretty much wrote down every word spoken at this convention from every debate from every delegate uh really amazing work that was his job and he took such great notes because he understood the significance of this moment now those notes are bound and published and found in any library or any bookstore you want if you want to know what happened at this convention if you want to know who said what pick up Madison's notes on the convention they're all right there for you Okay so we've talked about the delegates we've talked about the founders the framers in general we talked about some of the more important delegates so now it's time to talk about the actual work that happened at the Constitutional Convention