The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was moments away from completely falling apart, all because of someone you have never heard of.
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Gunning Bedford, a delegate from Delaware, was determined to not let the smaller states like his get trampled by the larger ones. He even went so far as to threaten that if the large states didn’t relent, the small states would find “some foreign ally of more honor and good faith” to protect them. When he said that, the room erupted. Delegates accused him of treason.
Wounds from the Revolutionary War were still fresh, and no one wanted to hear phrases like “foreign ally” spoken as a threat.
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In the end, cooler heads prevailed. Bedford actually helped negotiate the Great Compromise, which struck a balance of power between the small and large states. That compromise resulted in a bicameral legislature — two bodies — one where each state would get two senators, and one where population would determine how many seats each state gets.
Bedford never altered his fundamental beliefs about how power should be allocated. However, he did learn to work better with the other delegates to find solutions.
These aren’t the stories we usually tell about our founders. But in an age of deepening polarization, the stories of how they routinely passionately disagreed without walking away from each other may be exactly what we need to hear. That isn’t to say that early American history was a polite, gentle, scholarly debate. Quite the contrary — it has always been tumultuous.
Most Americans reject the idea that political violence is ever justified. But 20% to 30%, depending on the survey, believe it may now be necessary. Most also agree that political rhetoric has gone too far, but most are also more likely to blame the other party than their own. More than a third of Americans have lost a relationship with a friend or family member over politics.
We all agree there’s a problem. We just tend to think that the problem is someone else.
That, of course, is human nature, and it’s worth remembering how our founding generation handled that same instinct.
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Inside Independence Hall, episodes like Bedford’s threat were not uncommon. Debates ran hot, but when the day ended, the delegates didn’t scatter and go to their own corners. They didn’t just huddle up with their “side.” They actually gathered at taverns or at dinners hosted by Benjamin Franklin, where they argued the same questions in a lower key and, wisely, built the relationships that let them argue again the next morning.
Our founders didn’t build this country by agreeing with each other. They built it by disagreeing fiercely and refusing to give up on one another anyway.
Nothing about those dinners made the disagreements disappear. In fact, they did not. The delegates returned day after day to fight over questions about what America should look like on paper. Some disagreements and disputes were never fully resolved. Others demanded compromise that no delegate fully liked. But at the end of the day, men who had spent hours tearing into each other’s arguments could still sit down at the same table, as friends, notwithstanding their differences.
And, perhaps that’s the real difference. The world of our founders was no less divided than ours. But they were better at remembering what they still had in common: they had come to Philadelphia to protect the Union for which they had already bled.
That resolve was most clear on Sept. 17, 1787, the day of the final vote. Franklin rose to speak, but he was too frail to deliver his own remarks, so he handed them to James Wilson to read aloud. In it, Franklin admitted that he did not approve of every part of the Constitution. He had lived long enough, he said, to distrust his own certainty and to expect he might change his mind. But he still urged the delegates with reservations like his to vote yes.
And they did. More than two centuries later, we still live under the agreement that they signed on that day.
Our founders didn’t build this country by agreeing with each other. They built it by disagreeing fiercely and refusing to give up on one another anyway. As we embark upon America’s next 250 years, that is worth remembering.
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