August 5, 1787: Recess Over

Genl. Lafayette's departure from Mount Vernon 1784

Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/98501910/

"I am Very Anxious to Hear of the Convention. The fame of the United States Requires that some thing be immediately done. It is Still More Important to their happiness."

--The Marquis de Lafayette to James Madison

Sunday, August 5, 1787

The Convention remained in recess and would reconvene the next day. Since today was a Sunday, the five-member Committee of Detail had likely already completed its task of writing the first draft of the Constitution of the United States. The members of that committee were

• John Rutledge (SC)
• Edmund Randolph (VA)
• Nathaniel Gorham (MA)
• Oliver Ellsworth (CT)
• James Wilson (PA)

No record exists of their internal deliberations during the drafting process. The template for their work was a series of resolutions the Convention had passed over the course of the summer.

Synopsis

• The Convention’s recess was ending, and the delegates would reconvene the next day.
• The five-member Committee of Detail had likely already completed the first draft of the United States Constitution.

Delegates Today

• James Warren wrote from Milton, Massachusetts, to his old friend Gerry (MA): “We hear that you have brought the great Business of the Convention nearly to a Conclusion. I wish it may be a happy one. We are told it will make us happy if it be not our own faults; but every Curiosity is raised to know the result in detail, every pen is held ready for Action & perhaps it will be as thoroughly scanned out doors. as it had been in Convention....”
• Johnson (CT) awoke in Burlington, NJ to find that he could not get a passage to Philadelphia. His expenses for the day came to 12 shillings.
• Washington (VA) had an early dinner at Colonel Ogden’s, after which he returned to Philadelphia with Gouverneur Morris (PA) and Robert Morris (PA), arriving about 9:00 P.M.
• McClurg (VA), who had left the Convention, wrote Madison (VA): “I am much obliged to you for your communication of the proceedings... for I feel that anxiety about the result.... If I thought that my return could contribute in the smallest degree to it’s Improvement, nothing should keep me away. But as I know that the talents, knowledge, & well-establish’d character, of our present delegates, have justly inspired this country with the most entire confidence in their determinations; & that my vote could only operate to produce a division, & so destroy the vote of the State, I think that my attendance now would certainly be useless, perhaps injurious.” The reference to destroying “the vote of the state” is simple math: there were five Virginia delegates besides McClurg, who had previously sided with Madison and Washington in favor of strengthening the executive, as against the vote of the other three, Mason, Randolph, and Blair. McClurg preferred for the votes of the delegates he disagreed with to control Virginia’s vote than for his presence to cause Virginia’s vote to keep deadlocking.

Philadelphia Today

• The day was very warm and fair.