Constitution of the United States

Audience

The Constitutional Convention had several audiences—the Confederation Congress, the state legislatures, the American people, and all of humankind. On the last day of the convention, delegates approved the text of a letter addressed to the president of Congress. The letter, signed by George Washington, was written in the tradition set by Congress of sending cover letters with various documents (including the Articles of Confederation) that it sent to the states. Meant for political purposes, the letter explained that the nation's central government needed many more powers but that granting additional powers to the unicameral Confederation Congress would be dangerous—“Hence results the necessity of a different organization.” The difficulty lay in determining exactly how to distinguish and separate federal and state powers. Because the Union was thought to be essential, as stated in the letter, each state delegation had proved willing “to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude, than might have been otherwise expected; and thus the Constitution, which we now present, is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensible” (Constitutional Convention to Congress, September 17, 1789; qtd. in Jensen, vol. 1, p. 305).

Wherever the Constitution was printed, this letter appeared above the signature of George Washington. Federalists asked opponents how they could doubt the benefits of the Constitution if it was being endorsed by Washington himself; the question was a hard one to answer.

The Constitutional Convention also passed two resolutions on its final day. The first asked Congress to send the Constitution to the states with a request that the state legislatures call specially elected conventions to ratify the new form of government. The second resolution suggested that once nine state conventions had ratified the Constitution, Congress should provide for its implementation.

Delegates to the convention collectively hoped that the American people would agree to call these special conventions and that they would seriously debate whether or not to ratify the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton addressed this issue in the first of a series of eighty-five newspaper essays—of which some were written by Hamilton, some by Madison, and a few by John Jay—that would later be compiled and published as The Federalist:

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis, at which we are arrived, may with propriety be regarded as the aera in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act, may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

The delegates of the Constitutional Convention indeed hoped that people in other countries in the future would have the same opportunity to establish “good government from reflection and choice.”