127 Days That Shook the World

THE GREAT REHEARSAL (336 pp.)--Carl Van Doren--Viking ($3.75).

Their purpose was noble; they themselves, with few exceptions, were unassuming. They drifted into Philadelphia one or two at a time, put up at the Indian Queen Hotel, got to the State House at 10 or 11 in the morning, and sat around in the famous room with its high windows, waiting for the other delegates. They arrived so slowly that the opening hour was changed from 11 to 1 p.m. On May 25, 1787, almost two weeks after the first delegates assembled, the Constitutional Convention held its first official session.

Every schoolchild knows what success attended their efforts; it is a commentary on the writing of American history that most of the men themselves are unknown. There are volumes on the staff officers of Robert E. Lee, but who, aside from students, knows George Wythe and John Blair, James Wilson, Luther Martin, William Paterson, Richard Bassett, Jacob Broom or Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer? Something is wrong with any definition of greatness that excludes them.

No Wisecracks. Their great achievement was to create an atmosphere in which disputes could be settled--an example which, says Author Van Doren, could well be emulated by the United Nations today. All the things the Constitutional Convention was not help to define what it was: it was not bombastic; there was no playing to the gallery, no wisecracking, no demolishing of an opponent by invective or ridicule. The displays of learning were soon exhausted--the delegates got tired of hearing about the ancient republics. The delegates were calm, and even when they rushed articles through, their decisions were deliberate. Nor was there much speculation by them on the awful fate that would overtake mankind if they failed.

Many delegates had arrived believing that they were empowered only to revise the Articles of Confederation. In four days, between May 28 and May 31, crucial and bold decisions were made. It was agreed that a national government should be established; that the members of the first branch (the House) should be elected by the people, and that each house should have the power to originate acts. Even more fundamental, Congress should have the power to negative all laws of the states that contravened the articles of union. Then, having done all this, the delegates fell to arguing details.

Meeting five, six, or seven hours a day, often reversing themselves, returning again & again to such questions as how Senators were to be elected and how much power the President should have, the delegates marked time until the middle of June. The convention became deadlocked, its very existence threatened.

Said Benjamin Franklin: "The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other ... is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of Human Understanding.... We have been assured, Sir, that 'except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: we shall be divided by our little partial local interests ; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages."

The Pause That Cools. Usually, when the convention deadlocked, it adjourned for a few days. Indeed, the frequent adjournments seem in retrospect to have revealed almost as much statesmanship as the measures themselves. They cooled tempers, or they permitted vaguely formed ideas to crystallize. Moreover, the late arrivals among the delegates were new reinforcements for one group or another. They were like substitutes sent in at a critical moment in a football game, and in many respects they were, like Roger Sherman of Connecticut, more effective than the members of the first team.

In mid-July, the delegates of the larger states met in caucus and unwittingly contributed the great compromise of the convention. Listening to their inconclusive talk, the delegates of the small states realized that there was no concerted plan among them to override the rights of the smaller states. The small states surrendered their hope of equal representation in the House, thus giving up their attachment to a confederation of equal states. The larger states surrendered proportional representation in the Senate, thus abandoning any hope they held of a consolidated government over the entire country. Once this was accomplished, the details were settled swiftly, and on Sept. 17, the 127th day after the first delegates assembled, the Constitution was adopted.

39 Against Chaos. Making allowance for the many adjournments, the basic pattern of a new government had been created in less than two months, the remaining days spent in refining and improving upon it. The 39 delegates had not only brought order out of chaos; they had created a new kind of state, varied, allowing for infinite differences, and solving the problem of a national control that still preserved local and individual liberty. One of the contributions of Carl Van Doren's book is that it provides readers with all the information they need to answer the old questions about the Constitution's rigidity, its difficulty of amendment, and its usefulness in a time of crisis. It also throws a good deal of light on discussions as to whether the American Constitution is as effective an instrument of government as the unwritten constitution by which the British Empire is governed (readers will probably decide it is better).

The Great Rehearsal is a day-by-day account of the convention; it is cool and unexcited. Deliberately, it seems, Author Van Doren has restrained himself from paying tribute to the magnitude of the accomplishment that he records. The book's drama is not in the telling, but in the event. For the miracle of the Constitutional Convention was not that the delegates organized a nation; it was the kind of nation they created, one that has grown and prospered beyond any in history, and will so continue, as long as it remains faithful to its origins.

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