>> wonderful. each week at this time american history tv feet turnz hour-long conversation from c-span's sunday night interview series "q&a" here's this week's q & a on american history tv. this week on "q&a" our guest is david stewart or of "the summer of 1787 the men who invented the constitution" ab t

about. >> david stewart, when did you think you wanted to write a book about the 1787 constitutional convention? >> it was some years ago i was involved in a case in the supreme court and became motivated by myo posing counsel's argument and thought he wasn't telling truth about what happened in the convention based on what i must have known. so i did some research on my own and it look like he might have been telling the truth. so i bought madison's notes to the convention, which are about 500 pages, took them home over the weekend and read them. i was just knocked out. they were an amazing story of, you know, passion, wisdom, some foolishness, and it's also important to us every day. you can't pick up the paper without something in that newspaper involving what they did for those four months. they really wrote the rule book for the country.

and it just seem like a wonderful story that i wanted to tell. >> how many timeses that been told before? >> a few. there's certainly at least one book has been very popular, "miracle in philadelphia" did it very well, others have tried. i thought i could bring something special to it as a lawyer who dealt with these issues and i wanted to tell it in a different way. i wanted to take the reader through the experience of being a delegate and really march through the frustrations and the trivlations of being there that summer, dealing with these difficult people and these difficult problems. >> how did you do it, then? >> it seterms of assembling? >> how did you make it unique. >> i stayed close to the word of the delegates. we have madison's notes, notes from several other delegates and also a lot of letters that the delegates wrote when they were in philadelphia or before or after about what happened. so we can really stick pretty closely to what they say

happened. and i think that gives you a sense of the texture and feel and how they thought about these issues, which is, i think, so valuable, trying to understand what they were trying to do and what they did. >> when did you decide that you wanted to show in that couple paragraphs that james madison was really not the father of the constitution? >> well, throughout. and he never said he was the father of the constitution. what he -- he might have been the father of the convention. i think he was so important for getting the convention to happen. but once he was there, he did not persuade the other delegates on a lot of the issue his cared most about. it felt to me like something that people ought to understand better. there are very important people in that convention who have been lost to history and who made a huge impact on how our

constitution is written. and madison was very important, too, but these others were just as important. so i wanted to sort of balance those scales a bit. >> give us your take on somebody that we don't known about that you put in this book. >> well, john rutledge is a character who really impressed me tremendously, which was not easy because he was a slave holder and he was a great defender of slavery. there's lots not to like about him. but he was -- he had a modern senseabilty in a lot of ways. he was very cut and dried, he wanted to get to the point. his remarks, it was a flowery time. people spoke at length and in complicated ways to the modern era. rutledge was quite to the point. and he really was about making it happen. he was unsentimental. when he lost an argument, when he lost a struggle he walked away from it said, okay, what's the next one?

and he was very creative in coming up with ways to deal these problems. he and another delegate, lost to history, james wilson, between them quite a partnership in making the constitution happen. both really died in disgrace and very sad stories, but at the convention, they were terrifically important and very effective. >> the georgia delegate that we never heard of that you said if he hadn't done what he did we wouldn't have the same country we have today. >> yeah, abraham baldwin. unusual figure, he -- there was a key moment in the convention when the small -- it takes a second to set up -- big states, they were massachusetts, pennsylvania, virginia, which maybe today we don't think of as big states but they were then, were very eager to create proportional representation. so they would be able to vote

their strength. until then, this country we always had one vote per state. and it always made them crazy that rhode island and delaware, puny little state would have the same vote that they did. so they made an alliance. this is a james wilson/john rutledge alliance to make that happen, and they got that adopted. and then the small states really rebelled and they were very upset about this, and it got tied into what was the power of states be after the constitution. there was something big happening here

convention, and for weeks slowed everybody down. everybody had to know something happened and what happened the georgia delegation, which stood firmly in the alliance of large states and slave states two delegations went away, and mr. baldwin prevailed upon to change his vote. and the result was to completely change the momentum and get the small states back into the game and they ended up with equal votes in the senate as a result of the switch. it was the biggest crisis of the convention. >> you said that mr. baldwin never talked about this? why he did this? >> never explained it. hes and a senator for several terms from georgia and he just never found an occasion that he cared to talk about it. >> who did you write this book for? >> i really wrote it for people

everywhere. i didn't want it to be for lawyers. i didn't want it to be for scholars. i wanted it to be for people who wanted to understand the country and understand how we were conceived and what our -- how the rule book was written. i think it's a story that i wanted to tell and i wanted to -- people to understand the people who were involved. it was very human process. you know, abraham baldwin changing the vote at the last minute. the deals that were struck, the floundering they made on the presidency, maybe we'll have a chance to get into, a terrible time figuring out the presidency and dopey ideas floated. and i wanted people to understand also to sort of demisty size the whole process and understand it's okay to change the constitution, too. maybe the most important thing that was said there was george mason of virginia, i quoted it a couple of times to make sure

nobody missed it, that amending the constitution had to be practical. you had to be able to do it because of course what we do will be defective. it was an important insight. within three years they already adopted ten amendments, the bill of rights, and many other amendments since, we've had 27 so far. that's an important, so critical, too, human beings dealing with tough problems and doing the best they could. >> when did the convention occur, and where? >> it was in the summer of 1787, hence the title, and was in philadelphia in what we now call independence hall. it was called the state house, the pennsylvania state house. >> what were the dates? >> they finally convened on may 25th. supposed to start on the 17th but they didn't have a quorum, travel was tough in those days and it had been a rainy spring and people had trouble getting there, and they went through until september 17th, which is constitution day now. and so it was almost four

months. >> you also debunked another myth it really wasn't that hot. >> well, it was hot. it was philadelphia hot. but nothing special. i think they made it hot on themselves, because they had a very essential rule for them which was, they closed the windows. it was a secret session. nobody in the country knew what they were talking about and they thought it was essential for them to have a free and open exchange of views. but with the doors closed and windows closed, if it's 90 and humid, it's hot. and i think they were really hot all the time. so the conditions were exacerbated a lot. >> you said, and this is a number you don't hear very often, that 74 were appointed to go to the convention and 55 showed up and 30 stayed the four months, and a bunch didn't even stay there once they got there.

who -- give us the idea, how many states were there, how many states came and why didn't rhode island come? and where did the 74/55/30 number come from? >> that's from counting up the numbers. >> where did it come from then? >> there were 13 states and 12 actually did send delegates, and rhode island did not. and that was a special case. there's a wonderful little pamphlet that a fellow wrote with it titled "rhode island first in war and last in peace" how they didn't show up at the convention. they were very -- ri had a populist government which was in favor of paper money someone of the clear purposes of the convention was to kill off paper money. rhode island, because of that did not want to participate in it so they didn't send anyone. and individual states were issuing their own money, which

was obviously creating mayhem and great confusion in the marketplace. a number of states appointed delegates who chose not to come. in maryland it's a great story, the first five delegated appointappoin appointed, four of them said, gee, i'd rather not. they had to go down to the list until they found someone who would come. that experience was in other states. delegates were clear they didn' afraid of disease in philadelphia, which had a bad reputation for epidemics. you also then had delegates who showed up, a number of them left in a huff because they were unhappy with the way it was going, two new york delegates stayed for six weeks. so there really was a core of about 30 delegates and ifo cuss on three state delegations which i think made the greatest impact

and were so important there, which is pennsylvania, virginia, and south carolina. those delegations with a couple of exceptions for health reasons really did stay the whole time. >> you also give us a rundown of the background on the delegates, for instance, you say 29 wore the uniform during the revolutionary war, 35 were lawyers, 13 were involved in trade. what's that mean? >> it's hard to be sure some of the time. often it's just they are involved in chartering ships and trade to foreign ports. but sometimes they're just businessmen trading within the country. you have to be clear, too, many people had more than one occupation. so you'd have a lawyer who also was a planter, ran a plantation or you would have a merchant who also was involved in as a lawyer, in some instances. so you end up sort of with the higher total of on passions than

number of delegates. >> you also said that 12 owned or managed plantations with slaves on them. and 24 owned considerable amounts of debt. what's the important of either one of those? >> well the slave holders obviously slavery was a central issue at convention. we just as a nation it was an issue that couldn't be avoided although they certainly tried to. so i thought it was important to understand that they were well-represented there. owning the public debt is only interesting because these are people who have had invested in the country, in purchasing public debt, it was a lot of which was not redeemed ultimately, they really had put their money where their mouth was during the revolution and that, i think, is within measure of patriotism. >> how many of the 55 that came were rich? >> it would be hard for me to do a catalog sitting here, but at least half.

it was awelly group. >> anybody totally without money? >> i don't think anybody totally without money could hang out. >> pay their own way? >> states helped in many instants but in many instances no franklin, ben franklin, a rach man himself, proposal that all public officials shun get paid. has sort of an odd anti-democratic impact but it gives you a feel for where they were. >> at the front of the book you actually list the individuals, their profession, and their age, and i totalled them up to see how -- where they fit in the categories. there were three in their 20s, 17 in their 30s, 21 in their 40s, 7 in their 50s, 6 in their 60s, none in their 70s, and benjamin franklin, one, 81 years

old there in that category. unusual? >> it was sort of a frontier society still. i think it was sort of a young country and it was a tough time. i think in the 18th century not too many people lived to a great age. so those numbers do look young. we certainly had young leaders then, hamilton was 32. charles pinkney, very important, was 29. >> let's me stop you there. you said he tried to fudge his age because he wanted to be the youngest. >> yeah, he was caught. >> how did he get caught? >> he claim head was 25, sticks in my head it might have been madison, madison was the policeman after the convention to make sure things were accurate. somebody pointed out that he had been 29 at the time. >> who was he? >> charles pinkney was an aristocrat. he had been a soldier during the war, an officer, and had been

educated as a lawyer, was a talented guy, smart guy, a little erratic at the convention. but he was the only delegate who showed up with a draft constitution in his hand. it was ignored mostly but he did a lot of work. he had been in the congress and had held hearings actually on whether there ought to be a new constitution at the time was the articles of confederation, but whether that ought to be replaced. despite his youth he thought about these issues pretty hard. >> you are yale, yale undergrad, law school, worked for justice powell on the supreme court as a clerk. judge basilon on the circuit court and judge scaly wright. what about your legal experience -- you practice law -- what about that legal experience and the government mattered to you as you wrote this book? >> well, the time as a law clerk to those really fine judges is

sort of a graduate education in law. you get a chance to read a lot of -- and think hard about cases. although you're a young person you do get a chance to sort of pretend you're the judge. the judge actually makes the decision but you're in the position. and you're watching him and helping him make that decision. so it is an opportunity to think more broadly about the law than you would ever have as a young lawyer when you're off doing sometimes rather minute matters. it's a great opportunity to have those. particularly the era at the supreme court, i was exposed to constitutional issues just as a steady diet, day in day out, and you get comfortable with them and familiar with them, and intrigued by them. >> you also played a role with walter nixon, who was impeached. >> i was his defense counsel in the senate. >> who was he? was he convicted? >> yes, he was convicted.

judge nixon had been convicted in acriminal trial of giving false testimony to a grand jury and that was affirmed on appeal and then i was retained to try to get his case heard by the score supreme court which it wasn't and he did go to prison but he was stout in his view, which i supported as his counsel, that actually the testimony had not been false. so he did not resign as a judge. and we went through the impeachment process and it was a very much uphill fight since the judge was in jail at the time. we won some votes and changed some minds. he was convicted by the senate, which was a disappointment but not a surprise. >> did you have to stand on the floor of the senate and defend him? >> i did. >> how long did that take? >> well, that became an argument. or disagreement. the senate in the 1980s gave up trying cases on the floor of the senate except in the case of a president. so they had us try the facts,

here the witness is before a committee of 12 and i thought that was not permitted by the constitution, and tried to challenge it in court, was unable to before the trial but after we went through it we did get it back to court. so the only thing that happened on the senate floor was closing argument. we did do closing arguments on the floor of the senate. >> how many judges in history have been impeached and convicted? >> i believe the -- i should know this number but i believe it's 13. >> what would these founding fathers, as they're called, think about the fact that there have been 13 judges, i mean, did they think about that at the convention itself, impeached and convicted? >> on impeachment, i think they were very concerned over impeachment of presidents and i think on judges that just sort of got pitched in there was some -- they wanted to be careful how judges were to removed, they wanted to protect them from political pressures.

they used impeachment mechanism for them too. they would probably think 13 was a low number. they had a jaundice view of human nature and thought people were easily corrupted. so 13 might not bother them very much. >> you have a -- also list in the book of some of the background where a number of these delegates came from in the sense what they participated in earlier. eight of them you say signed the declaration of independence, 15 helped draft state constitutions. 25 were members of the continental congress which was what? >> continental congress was the congress until the articles of confederation were adopted which is 1781. so it's the congress, the first continental congress '74-'75 and the second extented from 17175 through 1781. >> where did the continental congress meet? >> philadelphia. >> where did the confederation

meet. >> the confederation congress started in philadelphia. actually continental congress had to rush off to lancaster, pennsylvania to avoid the british troops at one point. but the confederation congress in 1782, i believe, had to flee philadelphia because there were mute antist soldiers who marched in the capitol. they spent some time in annapolis in princeton, new jersey in trenton and ended up in new york where they were for several years. it was a very vivid image howen ept and unsuccessful that congress was. they couldn't even find a home. >> the last item on the list, 3/4 served in the confederation congress. what about the fourth that didn't? how did they get to the convention? why did so many, did they have to walk across the street? >> well, the state legislatures selected the delegates so they

decided who among them was appropriate. but could not serve in the confederation congress more than two years ut of three. they had to circulate their members. the confederation congress was often new york, while the convention was sitting in philadelphia, and there were nine men who were in both, which was quite awkward. i think madison was in both and basically never went to congress. and a couple of them went back to forth a couple of the georgiaens and a felony from north carolina. >> if you came as a delegate and you're in philadelphia, and there was a confederation congress, was there a president? >> no. they had no president. they selected a president of the congress and he, you know, would preside over congressional issues but -- it's hard to contemplate what the government was. this is the period before the conventions, 1787 or before

ratification of the constitution in 1788. there was no real executive branch. there were no bureaucrats. there were a few people who did clerical work for congress. there were no federal courts. the states didn't want the federal government to have any power. that was their whole idea. they were getting rid of the british, getting rid of the empire, and they wanted to control their own lives. and so they set up a system with almost no central power and after a very short number of years concluded that that really wasn't a very good system. and that's what led to the convention. >> you also tell us what happened to a number of the delegates after the convention was over and we had a country and we had a congress and all of that. you say five delegates ended up as supreme court justices. 16 ended up in the united states senate. 13 in the u.s. house. four became cabinet secretaries. does that number seem small, large, or what you would expect? >> i think it's what you would

expect. these are the leaders of the country. these were the premier people. frankly, having spent four months with each other, president washington who would be president for the next eight years, he had a good opportunity to look at these people see who he might want to have in his government. so he put several of them on the supreme court. so i think it was a what you would expect. >> you said george washington didn't say a world during the whole convention except at the end where he got involved in one issue, what was the issue? >> the issue was how many -- how big congressional districts would be. the draft constitution at that moment had said they could have up to 40,000 people. now we have 500,000 people in the congressional district but that was much smaller country then. and they -- he -- somebody -- a couple of delegates tried to get that reduced so there would be smaller districts, more congressmen, greater intimacy

between the people and representatives, and had failed. and washington picked that issue. on last day he stood up and said i haven't said anything so far and i think the number ought to be 30,000. they didn't have a vote, it was by acclamation, everybody said, fine, whatever general washington is good with us. >> what would have made a difference if it stayed at 40? >> fewer congressmen. i don't think it would have been a huge difference. >> one of the subthemes in the book, maybe you consider it a theme, is slavery. almost on every page, slavery comes up in all kinds of ways. i put together a bunch of things that you say about the slave owners who are in the convention. let me read them. 10 of the first 15 presidents were slave owners. john adams would have. won a second term as president but for 12 electoral votes cast for jefferson and burr and that represented southern slaves,

counted as 3/5 of their real number. for 27 years of the nation's first 35 years, southerners sat as speakers of the house of representatives. 19 of the first 34 supreme court justices were slave owners, slave holders. how did they ever get through this convention dealing with the slave owners? and the 3/5 of a person who decided that? >> well they all did. obviously. but what happened, it's one of these remarkable bargains where james wilson of pennsylvania was desperate to ensure proportional representation so they each state would get the same number of congressmen as they had population. and breakaway from the one vote per state system. and he needed votes. he -- the three big states would support him on that but the smaller states wouldn't. so he made a bargain with the slave owners and john rutledge of south carolina was willing to make that bargain.

and so that's where the 3/5 rule came in. 3/5 rule had sort of a horry integrity, had been used some years earlier as a proposal and it's a twisted, perverse concept. madison, in one of the federalist papers, writes about it and says it's not so bad. he was trying to sell the constitution in the essay. he says, you know, it says that these human beings are part property and part human and after all, isn't that what they are, which is painful to read. but it has a certain truth to it at the time. we did, you know, people were sold. we allowed that. so this slave state came into the union as slave states. there was not a feel for abolition in the country at the time. many of the delegates were actually abolitionists in their views, which was interesting to

me. i hadn't understood that. and there were big fights over slavery at convention. none of which it seemed like anybody wanted to have but they sort of slide into them because it was such a tough issue for everybody. >> you paint a picture of george washington arriving in philadelphia driven into philadelphia with his slave and you know control of the horses. >> it's true. that was one of the research things i worked hard on, was to identify that -- they would call the people servants but i was able to track them back to his list of slaves from 1786. >> anybody ever done that before? >> not in a book of this currency. i -- i want to be clear, i rely a good bit on what work scholars have done ahead of me and i'm grateful to them. >> one of those you relied on, max ferand. in your notes he's cited all the time. you can get t