September 12, 1787: The Convention Rejects a Bill of Rights

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

"It would give great quiet to the people; and with aid of the State declarations, a bill might be prepared in a few hours."
— George Mason, on a bill of rights

In the Convention: Wednesday, September 12, 1787

The second draft. Johnson (Connecticut) presented the Committee of Style's second draft of the Constitution, and the delegates ordered printed copies for every member. The committee also reported a letter to send it to Congress.

Overriding a veto. Hugh Williamson (North Carolina) moved to let Congress override a veto by two-thirds instead of three-quarters. He admitted he had first proposed three-quarters, but had come to think it put too much power in the president's hands.

• For: Sherman (Connecticut), Gerry (Massachusetts), Mason (Virginia) and Charles Pinckney (South Carolina). Williamson feared too many laws less than too few, and worried especially that Congress would struggle to repeal bad laws a president supported.
• Against: Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania) held that too many laws were more to be feared than too few. New York's experience, where his political career began, showed him that a two-thirds override let too many bad laws through; Hamilton, New York's only delegate still present, agreed. Morris called the instability of laws the greatest danger — many good laws, he said, are not tried long enough to prove themselves — and argued that a president who vetoed too much would lose re-election. Madison (Virginia) took a similar view.

The motion passed, 6 states to 4:

A bill of rights. Williamson and Gerry regretted that the Constitution did not guarantee jury trials in civil cases. That prompted Mason to say the Constitution needed a bill of rights, and that he would second a motion for one. Gerry moved it; Mason seconded.

Sherman thought it unnecessary: the states' constitutions had bills of rights, and the federal Constitution could not override them. Mason was not satisfied, pointing out — rightly — that "the laws of the United States are to be paramount to State Bills of Rights."

The motion for a bill of rights was rejected unanimously.

In short

• The Committee of Style presented its second draft and a letter of transmittal to the Confederation Congress.
• The vote needed to override a veto fell from three-quarters to two-thirds of each house.
• Gerry and Mason's attempt to add a bill of rights was unanimously rejected.

The delegates' day

• Johnson dined with the Convention's secretary, William Jackson, then visited his fellow Connecticut man Noah Webster.
• Washington, Baldwin (Georgia) and perhaps others dined at Franklin's. Washington took tea with the artist Robert Edge Pine.
• John Sevier, governor of the unrecognised State of Franklin (in what is now Tennessee), wrote to Benjamin Franklin to thank him for his letter of June 30 and its kind advice.

Philadelphia today

• It was oppressively hot.
• The Pennsylvania Gazette ran an advertisement for a young woman, recently bereaved of her first child, who offered to nurse another; enquiries went to the printing office or to Stephen Blunt, shoemaker, on Chestnut Street.

Sources

• National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park, "September 12, 1787: No Bill of Rights," from The Constitutional Convention: A Day by Day Account for September 1787. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-september12.htm
• The original labels Williamson "(NJ)"; Hugh Williamson was a delegate from North Carolina.
• Quotations are from the Convention's records of 1787; the rest is rewritten in hubnx's own words.