September 5, 1787: The Electoral College Debate Goes On

George Mason, by Dominic Boudet after John Hesselius, 1811. Gunston Hall.

"[I] would prefer the Government of Prussia to one which will put all power into the hands of seven or eight men, and fix an aristocracy worse than absolute monarchy."
— George Mason

Wednesday, September 5, 1787

Brearley (NJ), chair of the Committee of Eleven on unresolved issues, released more of its report.

• A peacetime army: the report let Congress keep a standing army in peacetime. Gerry (MA) still called it "dangerous to liberty"; Sherman (CT) wanted "a reasonable restriction." The states approved it unanimously.
• Federal land: Congress could acquire land inside a state for forts, dockyards "and other needful buildings." Gerry feared this could be used "to enslave any particular State by buying up its territory," with the strongholds "awing the State into an undue obedience to the General Government." King (MA), seconded by Gouverneur Morris (PA), moved to require the state legislature's consent. It passed unanimously.

The Electoral College, again

Most of the day continued yesterday's debate over choosing the President by an Electoral College, with the Senate deciding when no one won a majority of electors.

The arguments:

• Charles Pinckney (SC) disliked the plan: electors wouldn't know enough and would vote for home-state candidates. With votes scattered, the Senate would nearly always choose — giving it too much power over the President.
• Gouverneur Morris "thought the point of less consequence than it was supposed on both sides": most elections would produce a majority winner. Mason replied that if Morris was so sure, he shouldn't mind dropping the majority requirement.
• Sherman liked the committee's balance: large states would dominate the Electoral College, small states had outsized weight in the Senate.
• On the one-third idea — fewer elections thrown to the Senate, but no President with absurdly low support — Gerry "objected, that this would put it in the power of three or four States to put in whom they pleased."

Synopsis: the delegates again failed to agree on the Electoral College.

Delegates today

• Shared rooms: Pennsylvania Assemblyman Jacob Hiltzheimer wrote that he rode with Langdon (NH) "in his Phaeton," and that the Assembly met in the State House's lower room and adjourned to meet "to morrow 1/2 past 9 o'clock in the upper room, Leaving the Lower room as before to the Gentlemen of the Convention."
• Washington (VA) dined at Mrs. House's and took tea at Mr. Bingham's. Like Madison, Read (DE) and Dickinson (DE), who boarded at Mrs. House's, he had long known her family.
• Gorham (MA) borrowed 36 pounds from Robert Morris (PA) to pay his board and his trip home.
• McClurg (VA) wrote from Richmond with medical advice for Madison: "I am not surprised that you have been indisposed, at this season, with such a weight of business upon you." He urged rest, and said he "would readily give up the satisfaction he takes in your letters, for the pleasure of hearing that you are in health."
• Robert Fenning wrote from London offering Washington his skills in horticulture and estate management, citing "Mr. Laurence [Henry Laurens] of Charles Town, South Carolina and Mr. Samuel Chase of Maryland." Washington, typically, answered briefly and courteously in January 1788.

Philadelphia today

• Weather: cool and pleasant, partly cloudy.
• The Gazette reported "that the Convention propose to adjourn next week, after laying America under such obligations to them for their long, painful and disinterested labors, to establish her liberty upon a permanent basis."

← September 4: The Electoral College · September 6: The Electoral College Completed →

Sources

Based on "September 5, 1787: Refining the Proposal," part of the series The Constitutional Convention: A Day by Day Account for September 1787, Independence National Historical Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The 1811 portrait is in the public domain.