What Was Madison Trying To Do In The Constitution?

It is so inspiring to hear so many people today discussing our Founding Fathers, what they said, what they believed, and how they would react to the debate we find ourselves today. Just recently I read a book titled "What Would The Founder's Do," maybe we should buy every member of Congress, Senator, and President a wrist band with WWFD.

With the renewed focus on our founders, if we will actually study them and their prodigious writings, we will see that the essence of the debate has never changed, just the scope. I believe that they would all be appalled at where we are today, except maybe John Adams, he had a pretty low belief in the intelligence and character of the masses.

After the revolution, for that matter during the revolution, it became increasingly obvious to a handful of America's leaders that the Articles of Confederation simply charted a far too weak central government that would be doomed to fail. When a group of debt-plagued farmers in Massachusetts led by Daniel Shay revolted at the prospect of losing their farms. Massachusetts was able to quell the uprising, but it sent shock waves across all of the States who realized that if it hadn't been there was no provisions in place to stop such anarchy. George Washington simply said, "Good God!" upon learning of the violence in New England. Though he had been reluctant to speak out earlier against the Articles of Confederation, he thereafter signed on to attend the Constitutional Convention, the impact of General George Washington joining this cause can not be overstated. He cranked out letters warning others that there were "combustibles in every State, which a spark may set fire to." The potential kindling of which he spoke included debtors everywhere, disillusioned settlers in trans-Appalachia, and in his neighborhood sullen slaves.

Benjamin Franklin pronounced the Constitutional Convention "une assembl'ee des notables." It was attended by notable Nationalists, this was the all star group of those who many had learned the need of a stronger government as officers in the Revolutionary Army with an army starved of supplies, food, and men by States who wouldn't send their quotas to the cause, or even stop the local farmers and merchants from not filling their orders to the American Army and selling their goods to the English who paid more for it.

The author of the Constitution, James Madison, was trying to bridge a gap between the Nationalists or Federalists, and the State rights advocates who were against and any strengthening of the central government, also known as the Anti-Federalists. Most Americans would have easily have fallen into the later group. However those pushing for the Constitution Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Mason, Franklin, and Adams among others were larger than life and carried great weight.

During the American Revolution, Madison's personal political outlook was transformed by the war and the myriad problems that carried into peace. He initially was an advocate of a system of a system of virtual state sovereignty, Madison's horizons were broadened during 1780 and 81, when Charleston fell to the British army and Virginia's vulnerability to British raids became readily apparent during Jefferson's governorship. Aware that the South needed assistance that could be provided only by an efficient national effort. Madison gradually moved toward the notion of granting Congress greater powers. His transformation into an unabashed Nationalist was completed by the crisis of the Union that was brought on by the abortive Spanish-American negotiations in 1786.

Madison understood that the Union was crucial for protecting American security and opening the newly acquired West. A strong a sovereign national government that was capable of disallowing state laws wold have the additional advantage, at least in his eyes, of reining in the exploding "leveling spirit" that fueled democracy and aroused fiscal irresponsibility.

He sought some way to balance safe government with "energy and stability in government," to erect a government that could act vigorously, yet not ti toward despotism. He also sought a means to assure that the national government would be in "safe" hands, as the colonial governments once had been. He wanted to protect against what he called the "dark and menacing evils of democracy." He needed to balance that the interests of the propertied elite would be safe from those who were lower in social and economic strata, and that the minority South would be safeguarded from an energetic national government certain to be dominated by northern interests. The one thing that he knew for certain was that change was inevitable; either the national government would be strengthened or the Union would come to an end.

Madison's plan called for a reconstructed national government where authority would be separated and balanced between judiciary, a strong executive, and a bicameral legislature armed with powers of taxation and the regulation of commerce. With so many branches, such a government would constitute a firewall against rapid and drastic change, while it's extensive election districts would function as a filtration system to weed out upstarts and ensure that the "most considerate and virtuous citizens" predominated. Above all, the national government was to be a sovereign. Having little use for the states.

His design was to assure the northern mercantile interest and social conservatives everywhere, but he also wanted to safeguard for certain minorities in which he was interested, the landowning elite and southern slave-owning planters. Madison also realized something that most had overlooked; the vast size of a republican United States would stymie profound change. The United States more than ten times the size of France, with such diverse interests would exist that no single faction could hope to predominate. Those separate interests would have to forge coalitions in order to attain power. Extremists-democrats and social levelers in his time, would be politically disarmed , making it very difficult for them to bring real change. Madison considered adding radical change to prevent radical change. He had sought a means of saving the Union and preserving what had been achieved in the American Revolution. The means he found created a system that the peaceful attainment of truly drastic reform would move with the speed of a glacier, to nearly impossible altogether.

What Madison didn't expect was American voters to give such huge advantages to any one faction in the House, Senate, and the President greasing the sled and allowing massive changes to breeze through. Madison and those brilliant founders in the summer of 1787 intentionally created a Constitutional Representative Republic, fearing anything close to a Democracy. We hear Americans complaining on how slow the government works, and all the gridlock. What they don't understand is that is exactly how it was designed to work, critical to maintaining our liberty.

Today we are seeing the efficient government that terrified our founders.