August 13, 1787: Immigrants as Representatives

Part of the National Park Service's day-by-day account of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, August 1787.

Silhouette of Thomas Jefferson. Library of Congress.

"We should be made one nation in every case concerning foreign affairs, and separate ones in whatever is merely domestic."
— Thomas Jefferson to John Blair

In the Convention: Monday, August 13, 1787

How long a citizen?

The session reopened the rule that members of the House must have been citizens for seven years.

• Wilson (Pennsylvania) and Randolph (Virginia) proposed 4 years; Williamson (North Carolina) proposed nine; Hamilton (New York) and Madison (Virginia) proposed requiring only citizenship and residency, leaving the length to Congress. Persuaded by Hamilton, Wilson withdrew his own motion.
• Wilson held up Pennsylvania as proof of the value of encouraging immigration: perhaps the youngest settlement on the Atlantic apart from Georgia, it was among the foremost in population and prosperity; almost all the generals of its line in the Revolutionary army had been foreign-born, with no complaint of their loyalty or merit; and three of its delegates — Robert Morris, FitzSimons and Wilson himself — were not native-born.
• Gerry (Massachusetts) and Butler (South Carolina), himself an immigrant, opposed admitting foreigners to Congress at all.

The votes:

Every attempt to change the requirements already agreed — seven years of citizenship for representatives and nine for senators — failed.

Money bills

Randolph moved to restore the rule that money bills must start in the House. Mason and Gerry backed him; Dickinson (Delaware), Wilson, Gouverneur Morris and Rutledge opposed. Carroll and McHenry of Maryland pointed out how hard money bills were to define, and the violent disputes they had caused between Maryland's senate and house.

The delegates' day

• Washington (Virginia) dined at Robert Morris's and took tea at Franklin's with Sarah Bache, Franklin's daughter.
• Washington's friend Col. David Humphreys wrote that he and like-minded people had been preparing citizens to accept whatever the Convention produced. In the spring he had predicted nothing good would come of it and advised Washington not to go; now, encouraged by the reports, he was glad to be proved wrong.
• Gerry wrote to his old friend James Warren, hoping the Constitution would be one they could both approve, free of "principles of mutability, corruption or despotism" — principles that some, he wrote, would not mind seeing in it.

Philadelphia today

• Clear and warm.
• The Pennsylvania Herald of August 15 reported that the day's session ran until 5 p.m., "when, it is said, a decision took place upon the most important question that has been agitated since the meeting of this assembly." No other source, Madison's notes included, bears this out.

Sources

• National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park, "August 13, 1787: Immigrants as Representatives," from The Constitutional Convention: A Day by Day Account. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-august13.htm
• The original's account of the day says Randolph's money-bill motion lost, while its summary says the Convention kept the rule; this page gives neither outcome.
• The original spells Washington's friend "David Humphries"; he was David Humphreys.
• Quotations are from the records and letters of 1787; the rest is rewritten in hubnx's own words.