Jesse Wegman

He does not get a lot of support for this.

So they say, you know, James, go home, come up with something a little better.

He comes back the next day and he proposes a system of electors who are chosen by

eligible voters and who then in turn choose the president.

That is remarkably similar to the system that we have today that we call the electoral college.

So this is yet another of the ironies of James Wilson's life is that he ends up proposing the very system that he opposed for choosing the president.

What ends up being adopted is the system that we know today, which is that each state gets a number of electors equal to its representation in Congress.

So that's the number of members of the House of Representatives it has plus its two senators.

So that means smaller states get a real benefit in the electoral college because they have proportionately more electors given their voters.

Again, Wilson was not happy with this arrangement, but he accepted it as the price of business for

And as the convention neared its end in September, I think everyone was so exhausted and wanting just to get this document out the door and ratified that he agreed to it.

You know, at the ratifying convention in Pennsylvania, where Wilson takes a leading role in convincing the delegates to that convention to support the Constitution, you know, he says, I acknowledge this was not the best arrangement.

I would have done it differently if I had had my way.

But we have laid the groundwork for the eventual elimination of slavery in the states.

You know, obviously, the Constitution as it was written barred any intrusion on the slave trade

for 20 years after its ratification.

But as we know, that fight would continue on into the middle of the 19th century and lead to the Civil War, which resulted in the deaths of more than half a million people.

And it was only then that slavery was actually banished from the Constitution.

Wilson did oppose slavery, but he was willing to live with it as the price of a Constitution that

with the other elements that he wanted so badly.