The Constitution was unquestionably a high-nationalist document, creating what Madison once referred to as a “high mounted government.” Not only were the essential lines of the nationalistic Virginia Plan Report carried out in the Constitution, but the later changes made were preponderantly in a nationalist direction. Of the fundamental changes, only the equality of states in the Senate and their election by state legislatures, the former bitterly protested by the determined large state nationalists, was a concession to the opposition.

The stage was now set for one of the great titanic struggles of the Philadelphia Convention: the postponed question of the nature of representation in Congress, and specifically on the Virginia Plan of proportional representation. William Paterson and David Brearley of New Jersey took the occasion to launch a full-scale counterattack on the large-state nationalist junto. Brearley opened by pointing to the convenient solution of the question that had already been hammered out in the formation of the Articles: equal voting by each state.

The Virginia Plan Report gave Congress the power to “legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incompetent; or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual Legislation.” This vague grant of the broadest of powers to the central government was now attacked by Rutledge and Butler of South Carolina who urged that it be returned to a committee for a specific enumeration—and therefore limitation—of powers.

The next phase of the convention now began. The basic attributes of the Constitution had been lain down. Now the convention selected a Committee of Detail, a five-man committee to actually draft a constitution based on the principles agreed upon during the convention sessions. Of the five now uniquely powerful men, only one—Oliver Ellsworth—was somewhat critical of nationalism, while the four—John Rutledge, Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Gorham, and James Wilson—were dedicated nationalists, but only James Wilson was a true fanatic.

The most important battle of the August days of the Constitutional Convention was waged, as had been the battle over the three-fifths clause, between the North and South and had at its heart the institution of slavery. One of the small number of restrictions on Congress in the draft Constitution was a prohibition of any tax on exports, or of any tax or prohibition on the “migration or importation of such persons as the several States shall think proper to admit”; in short, there was to be no restrictions on the slave trade.

A particularly vital aspect of the Constitution was the procedure to be set up for its ratification. The draft proposed that the Constitution be submitted to Congress and then to special conventions, so that state legislatures could be circumvented. More importantly, it imposed a revolution in the country’s polity because it proposed that only a certain number of states would need to ratify to put the Constitution in into effect—a strong violation of the Confederation’s unanimity principle.

All the articles of the draft plan having been considered by the convention, the amended draft was referred on August 31 to a grand Committee of Unfinished Parts. In the committee, the nationalists, not content with their plethora of victories, launched several important offensive strikes and secured crucial victories.