convention. However attractive it may have been to some of the delegates, all realized that it could never hope for adoption in its raw form. Something much more evasive and softspoken would have to be invented. Hamilton's plan was received so coldly that his feelings were hurt, and he left the convention and went home for a while. Washington wrote him, regretting his absence, and said, "I almost despair of seeing a favorable issue to the proceedings of our convention, and do therefore repent having had any agency in the business."

On August 7th, the convention considered the qualifications for suffrage under the proposed Constitution. The wisdom of Mr. Gouverneur Morris spread around the room. He said, "The time is not distant when this country will abound with mechanics and manufacturers (meaning factory hands) who will receive their bread from their employers. Will such men be the secure and faithful guardians of liberty?" He concluded they would not be.

Dr. Franklin thought that, "It is of great consequence that we should not depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people, of which they displayed a great deal during the war. There was a good deal of talk about “the dangers of the levelling spirit."

Charles Pinckney thought there ought to be a property qualification for members of the National legislature, the President and the Judges-enough property, he said to make them "independent and respectable." Mr. Pinckney's assertion inspired the aged Franklin to struggle to his feet and say that some of the worst rogues he ever knew were the richest rogues.

On the question of proportional representation there began what was probably the most spectacular battle of the convention, centering on representation in the lower house. This discussion broadened out into a general argument on the slavery question, and a bitter North-and-South contest over the question as to whether slaves should be counted in apportioning the number of representatives to the States arose. The truce between the large and small States had not dissolved in their alignments; these were unyielding. Both sides spoke until they exhausted themselves. Luther Martin spoke for three hours one day, and worn

out, waited to proceed on the following day, when he ended by presenting the alarming idea of a dissolution, with two Confederacies, composed of the larger and the smaller States. The tension increased perceptibly day by day during the fateful three weeks that were spent in approaching the climax. The convention was deadlocked. Again the spectre of dissolution. Mr. Morris said that "the fate of America was suspended by a hair." Committees were appointed to consider and seek a solution. The first, composed of one from each State, reported on July 5th a suggestion that the first branch of the legislature should have one representative for every 40,000 inhabitants, counting three-fifths of the slaves. The New England delegates were not satisfied. They maintained that if such a provision was adopted they wanted every horse in New England to be counted three-fifths of a person. Their argument seems reasonable, for slaves had no more to say about the government than horses. An attempt to specify the number of representatives from each State failed. An attempt to include the wealth of the States in the reckoning failed. An attempt to have the negroes counted equally with the whites failed. Finally, it was proposed that representation ought to be proportioned according to numbers, and that for this purpose a census should be taken within three years and every ten years thereafter, counting the slaves as three-fifths.

At this point the weather turned cool. Also, it happened to be what in modern parlance we call a "week end." On Monday morning the resolution was adopted.

From this time on the convention ran a little more smoothly. The chief Executive, his manner of election, term of office, his veto power, brought forth a great variety of views, and debate at times waxed warm, but at length these matters were agreeably determined.

The fifteen resolutions of the Virginia Plan had now been expanded to twenty-three, and changed in many ways, with the result that tle general principles of the Constitution had been laid down. On July 26th the convention turned these principles over to a Committee on Detail to make a draft of the complete instrument, and adjourned to August 6th. This Com

mittee embodied some suggestions of its own. Then the convention returned to its labors, studying and debating every line and sentence with meticulous care, fixing definitions, making alterations, compromising differences, finishing the work.

Again it goes to a Committee on Style and Arrangement, and much of the credit for this work is due to Gouverneur Morris, a member of the Committee. The actual phrasing seems to have been left to him. Mr. Channing says that Morris followed suggestions made by persons not members of the Committee, and by changes in phraseology and arrangement and the introduction here and there of phrases like "impair the obligations of contracts," the instrument when it reappeared from this committee was rather different in many respects from the project that had been referred to it.

The whole draft had now to be gone over again. There were still many actively opposed to one or another feature, and indeed many who were never satisfied, and who opposed it so bitterly that they refused to sign it.

Again Franklin came to the breach, and said that though there were provisions in the document that he did not approve, he would sacrifice those opinions to the public good. "Thus I consent, sir," he said, "to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best."

And Hamilton, who was now also desirous that all should sign, said, “No man's ideas are more remote from the plan than mine are known to be; but is it possible to deliberate between anarchy and convulsion on one side, and the chance of good to be expected on the other?"

A few of the recalcitrant members were won over to signing by Morris' suggestion that the delegates approve the Constitution as States, although they personally disapproved it.

In the end all the members present signed except Gerry, Mason, and the man who had intruduced the resolutions upon which it was so largely based, Edmund Randolph.

On all the questions having to do with the just relations of the Federal Government and the Governments of the States; the relations between the larger and smaller States; the regulation of the functions of the Executive, the Legislative and

Judicial departments of government, the framers brought to bear the profoundest wisdom.

When one reflects upon the magnitude and character of the task, the wonder grows that it was ever adopted. Mr. Madison's conclusion seems hardly extravagant, when he said, "adding to these considerations the natural diversity of human opinions on all new and complicated subjects it is impossible to consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle."

The Convention ended with the members in gloom, perhaps because of the final episodes attendant upon the difficulty in agreeing on signing. But the members parted after their great work amicably enough to adjourn, according to Washington, to the City Tavern, where, he said, they "dined together and took cordial leave of each other."

Though it was to be more than two years before the Constitution was accepted by the thirteen States, Franklin's remark is prophetic, and in accord with the verdict of history. While the last members were signing, he called attention to the sun that was painted on the back of the President's chair, and said, "I have often and often in the course of the sessions and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”

It was the 17th of September.

The hot summer was over. It was the cool of the dawn of a

new era.

APPENDIX II

1927

WILLIAM FLEMING

1736-1824

Judge William Fleming, third President of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, and a member of that tribunal longer than any other judge in its history, was born at Mt. Pleasant, in Goochland (now Powhatan) County, Virginia, on July 6, 1736,1 and died at Summerville, his home, in Chesterfield County, on February 15, 1824.2

He was of distinguished lineage. On his paternal side, his earliest ancestor in Virginia is said to have been Sir Thomas Fleming, second son of the Earl of Wigton in Scotland, Sir Thomas having married a Miss Tarleton in England and migrated to Virginia some time during the 17th century. They had several daughters and three sons, Tarleton, John and Charles.3 John Fleming became one of the foremos lawyers of his day, was a member of the Burgesses for eleven years preceding his death (1767), and a warm friend of Patrick Henry. So close was their intimacy that one writer tells us Colonel Fleming penned the stamp act resolutions for the impetuous young orator," a statement unsupported and doubtless untrue. Col. Fleming married. Mary Bolling by whom he had issue six sons and two daughters, the fourth of their sons being William Fleming, the subject of this monograph.6 William's mother, Mary Bolling Fleming, was the second daughter of John Bolling, the son of Col. Robert Bolling and Jane Rolfe, only daughter of Thomas Rolfe, only son of John Rolfe and the celebrated Pocahontas.7

Young Fleming was educated at William and Mary College where he formed many strong friendships which served to enrich