August 18, 1787: More Power to Congress

Part of the National Park Service's day-by-day account of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, August 16 to 31, 1787.

Elbridge Gerry. Independence National Historical Park.

"The existing Congress is so constructed that it cannot of itself maintain an army. This would not be the case under the new system. The people were jealous on this head, and great opposition to the plan would spring from such an omission."
— Elbridge Gerry

In the Convention: Saturday, August 18, 1787

New powers proposed

The Convention met at 11 a.m. as usual. Madison (Virginia) proposed nine more powers for Congress and Charles Pinckney (South Carolina) ten; without recorded debate, all went to the Committee of Detail. Among them, overlapping, were powers to:

• dispose of the unappropriated lands of the United States and set up temporary governments for new states;
• regulate affairs with the Indians;
• govern exclusively a seat of government and a district around it, of a size left blank;
• charter corporations;
• secure authors' copyrights and grant patents for useful inventions;
• establish seminaries for literature, the arts and sciences, and encourage useful knowledge, agriculture, commerce and manufactures;
• let the executive acquire land for forts, magazines and other buildings;
• secure payment of the public debt.

Pinckney's clause barring Congress from establishing a perpetual revenue went to the committee too.

State debts and longer hours

• Rutledge (South Carolina) moved for a Grand Committee on whether the federal government should take over the states' war debts: they had been run up in the common defence, and relieving people of them would make ratification more popular. King (Massachusetts) and Pinckney seconded. It passed 6–4–1 — New Hampshire, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland against, Pennsylvania divided — and a member was named from each of the eleven states present.
• Citing the long sitting, "the probable impatience of the public" and members' anxiety to finish, Rutledge moved to meet "precisely at ten o'clock" — an hour earlier — and not adjourn before 4 p.m. It passed 9–2, Pennsylvania and Maryland against.

An executive council?

Ellsworth (Connecticut) noted the draft gave the president no council, and suggested the heads of the main departments — foreign and domestic affairs, war, finance, marine — with the chief justice and the president of the Senate. Pinckney asked to wait for Gouverneur Morris, absent that day, who had a plan of his own, and the delegates agreed by general consent — though Gerry (Massachusetts) said department heads and judges should have nothing to do with making laws.

Armies and militia

• The powers to raise an army and navy passed unanimously. Gerry objected that the Constitution allowed a standing army in peacetime, and with Luther Martin (Maryland) moved to cap it at two or three thousand men. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (South Carolina), a general in the Revolution, asked whether no troops were to be raised until the country was attacked; Gerry feared a few states with a majority in Congress might set up a military government; Langdon (New Hampshire) saw no more reason to fear the general government than the states; and Dayton (New Jersey) noted that preparations for war are usually made in peace. The cap failed unanimously.
• Mason (Virginia) moved to let Congress regulate the state militias, hoping it would make a large standing army unnecessary and bring uniformity. C. C. Pinckney recalled from the war that differences between states' militias had done serious harm, and Butler (South Carolina) agreed the whole militia should come under the general government. Ellsworth, seconded by Sherman (Connecticut), thought that went too far and would allow regulation only in actual federal service. Mason then offered a narrower motion covering one tenth of the militia, while C. C. Pinckney and Langdon revived his original. Both went to the Grand Committee, 8–2–1 (Connecticut and New Jersey against, Maryland divided).

In short

• Madison's and Pinckney's proposed powers went to the Committee of Detail.
• A Grand Committee would study assuming state debts.
• The Convention would sit longer hours.
• An executive council was raised but postponed.
• Congress's power to raise an army and navy passed; a cap on the peacetime army was unanimously rejected.
• Control of the militia was referred to the Grand Committee.

The delegates' day

• Johnson (Connecticut) dined at his boarding house, took a walk, and seems to have passed a bookshop: he spent thirty-six shillings on books.
• Washington (Virginia) dined with Pennsylvania's chief justice, Thomas McKean, and spent the rest of the day at his lodgings.

Philadelphia today

• Cool, breezy and pleasant.
• The Pennsylvania Herald reported how members answered letters about rumours that the Convention meant to set up a monarchy: they could not say what they were doing, but could say what they were not — "we never once thought of a king."

Sources

• National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park, "August 18, 1787: More Power to Congress," from The Constitutional Convention: A Day by Day Account for August 16 to 31, 1787. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-august18.htm
• The original labels Rufus King "(NY)" and Gouverneur Morris "(NY)"; at the Convention King represented Massachusetts and Morris Pennsylvania.
• Quotations are from the records of 1787; the rest is rewritten in hubnx's own words.