September 4, 1787: The Electoral College

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

Tally of the Electoral College vote. National Archives.

"This subject has greatly divided the House, and will also divide the people out of doors. It is in truth the most difficult of all on which we have had to decide."
— James Wilson

In the Convention: Tuesday, September 4, 1787

The general welfare

The Committee of Eleven, set up to settle unresolved issues, made a partial report. Its first clause passed without opposition: Congress "shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare." That broad grant — power to provide for the nation's general welfare — let the federal government take on a host of activities, not all of them foreseeable at the time.

A new way to choose the president

The rest of the day went to presidential elections, a question the Convention had struggled with again and again. Pennsylvania's delegates had pressed for a national popular vote, but most thought it unworkable in so large and varied a country. The latest plan — election by Congress — broke the separation of powers, since a president chosen by Congress might not act independently of it.

The committee proposed an Electoral College:

• each state would have electors in proportion to its population, chosen "in such manner as [the state's] Legislature may direct";
• the electors would vote for president; the candidate with the most votes would win, and the runner-up would be vice president;
• if no one won votes from a majority of electors, the Senate would choose among the top five.

The debate

• Gorham (Massachusetts) disliked making the runner-up vice president: "a very obscure man with very few votes may arrive at that appointment."
• Sherman (Connecticut) defended the plan as keeping Congress from undue influence over the president.
• Randolph (Virginia) and Charles Pinckney (South Carolina) objected that the committee had overturned the agreed method of election by Congress.
• Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania) thought electors scattered far apart would make it harder for a scheming "cabal" to pick the president.
• Mason (Virginia) agreed, but feared that "nineteen times in twenty" no one would win a majority, leaving the Senate almost always to choose; Baldwin (Georgia) thought the worry overblown.
• Butler (South Carolina) called the plan far from perfect but better than election by the legislature.
• Wilson (Pennsylvania) called it "a valuable improvement," better still if the whole Congress, not just the Senate, broke deadlocks, since House members, with shorter terms, were less corruptible. Randolph, no fan of the plan, agreed with him on that.

Further debate was postponed.

In short

• Congress gained the power to tax "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare."
• The Committee of Eleven proposed choosing the president through an Electoral College.

The delegates' day

• Mifflin (Pennsylvania) and Dayton (New Jersey) breakfasted with Jacob Hiltzheimer of Philadelphia.
• Johnson (Connecticut) "Din'd Lewis'" — almost certainly William Lewis, a distinguished Quaker lawyer who had defended many of Philadelphia's Revolutionary War treason cases, living at Third and Walnut.
• Madison (Virginia) wrote to his father, asking after his health and news from Virginia, and noting that good tobacco fetched forty shillings in Virginia money in Philadelphia.
• Livingston (New Jersey) wrote fondly to his son-in-law John Jay, asking whether he had sent on the papers for John Tabor Kempe, and hoping soon to "exchange noise, bustle and formality, for tranquility, blackfish and Sincerity."

Philadelphia today

• The carpenter David Evans was paid six pounds by John Penn for a walnut coffin for Sabina Francis, servant of his uncle Thomas Penn. Philadelphia coffins were then mostly pine, walnut or mahogany, the wood marking the dead person's class.

Sources

• National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park, "September 4, 1787: The Electoral College," from The Constitutional Convention: A Day by Day Account for September 1787. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-september4.htm
• Quotations are from the records and letters of 1787; the rest is rewritten in hubnx's own words.