Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1886-12-04
The Trainers Of the Constitution.

left nothing TO be desired In its
strength and its weakness, it was an
ideally perfect assembly. There were
fifty-five men, all of them respectable
for family and for personal qualities
men who had been well educated, and
had done something whereby to earn
recognition in those troubled times.
Twenty-nine were university men,
graduates of Harvard, Yale, Columbia,
Princeton, Oxford and Glasgow. TWEEN
ty-siX were not university men, and
among these were Washington and
Franklin. OF the illustrious citizens,
who, for their public services, would
naturally have been here, John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson were in Europe:
Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry and
Richard Henry Lee disapproved of the
convention, and stayed at home; and
the greatest man of Rhode Island, Ma
thaniel Greene, who might have sue
ceeded in bringing his state into the
convention, had lately died of Il sun
stroke, at the early age of forty-four.
OF the two most famous men pres
ent little need be said. The names of
Washington and Franklin stood for
supreme intelligence and consumate
tact. Franklin had returned to this
country two years before, and was
now president of Pennsylvania, He
was c~ighty-one years of age, the old
est man in the convention. rs Charles
Pincknev, of South Carolina, aged
twenty-ninc, was the youngest. The
two most profound and original think
ers in the company were bnt little older
than Pinckney. Alexander Hamilton
was thirty, James Madison thirty-six.
Among political writer's these two men
must be ranked in the same order with
Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Locke, and
the Federalist, their joint production,
is the greatest treatise on government
that has ever been written. John Jay,
who contributed a few pages to this
/, immortal volume, had not been sent to
the convention, because New York did
not wish to have it succeed.
> Along with Hamilton, New York
E sent two commonplace men, Yates and
/, Lansing, who were extreme and OBJ
stinate anti-Federalists; and the action
of Hamilton, who was thus prevented
, from carrying the vote of his own
state for any measure which he might
, propose, was in this way sadly embar-
raised. For another reason, Hamilton
, failed to exert AS much influence in the
! convention As ore would have expected
from his profound thought and brilliant
; eloquence. Scarcely any of these men
, entertained what we should now call
extreme democratic views. Scarcely
any, perhaps. had that intense faith in
the ultimate good sense of the people
{ which was the most powerful cL.arac-
t~eristic of Jefferson. But Hamilton
and expressed his distrust of
popular government too plainly. His
q, views were too aristocratic and his
! preference for Capitalization was too
pronounced to carry conviction to his
hearers.
The leading part in the convention
, fell, therefore, to James Madison, a
Young man somewhat less brilliant than
Hamilton, but superior to him in
sobriety and balance of powers. Mad
ison used to be called the Father of
/, the Constitution and it is true that
the government under which we live
is more his work than that Of any other
one man. From early youth his life
+ had been devoted to the study of his
tory and the practice of craftsmanship.
He was a graduate of Princeton Col
legc. an earnest student. familiar with
all the best literature of political science
from Aristotle down to his WI time,
and he had given especial attention to
/, the history of federal government in
ancient Greece, and in Switzerland and
Holland. At the age of twenty-five he
, had taken part in the Virginia conven-
ton which instructed the dele.
gates from that state in congress
to bring forward the Declaration
of independence. During the last part
+, of the war he was an active and inilu-
entail member of congress, where no
one equaled or approached him for
knowledge of English history and con-
stitutional law. In 1884 he had re-
turned to the Virginia legislature. and
| been foremost in securing the passage
of the great act which gave complete
religious freedom to the people of that
: state. No man understood better than
, bo tha causas Of tho alarn,iuu weakness
of the federal government, and OF the
/, commercial disturbances and popular
discomfort Of the time; nor had any one
worked more zealously or more adroit-
/ ly in bringing about the meeting OF this
convention. As he stood here now, a
, leader in the debate, there was nothing
| grand or imposing in his appearance.
He was small of stature and slight
, IN frame. like Hamilton, but he