Word: virginia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...second time and a third. The Madison forces refused to budge. Madison gibed at Connecticut for tax evasion: "Has she paid, for the last two years, any money into the Continental Treasury?" Oliver Ellsworth angrily retorted, "Connecticut had more troops in the field than even the state of Virginia . . . We feel the effects of it even to this day." Pennsylvania's Wilson fretfully asked why the small states persisted in their suspicions of the large ones. Gunning Bedford of Delaware provided a sharp answer: "I do not, gentlemen, trust...
When the committee presented its constitution on Sept. 12, the delegates eagerly began trying to change things all over again, in ways large and small. Mason of Virginia declared for the first time that summer that there should be a bill of rights. He was voted down by ten states to none. Madison wanted a statement that Congress should create a national university, and Franklin wanted it authorized to dig canals, but they were both voted down...
...changing continued right up to the scheduled closing day, Sept. 17, but then it was finally time to sign. Three of the delegates present still had objections and refused, among them Virginia's Governor Randolph. The rest, however, generally subscribed to Franklin's declaration that although he too still had doubts and reservations, "I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better." He had decided that the sun on Washington's chair was rising...
James Madison hated the little microphone clipped to his waistcoat, he hated the way the cameramen sniggered at his height, and he hated talking in 20- second sound bites. But he was politician enough to recognize the importance of Good Morning, 13 Sovereign States. Two minutes to explain the Virginia Plan, a few banal questions, and the ordeal would be over. Madison remembered his instructions: no Locke, no Montesquieu, no Plutarch. Just simple declarative sentences, a confident smile and don't fiddle with your wig. "Jimmy, all you got to do is emote," his media consultant had told him. "Flash...
Back at his boardinghouse, Madison slipped off his boots and scanned the papers. Most alarming was a headline in the Pennsylvania Gazette: VIRGINIA PLAN TO BE SCUTTLED AS SMALL STATES BALK. Madison recalled seeing George Washington in deep conversation with two reporters at Robert Morris' party last night. Was Garrulous George the "influential Virginian" who was "privately pressing for compromise"? Madison turned to the editorial page. There George Shrill, his favorite neoroyalist columnist, was quoting Thucydides in the original Greek to argue that the 13 states needed the firm hand of a minor German princeling as monarch to quell...