Who were the dissenters at the Constitutional Convention?

0:06[MUSIC] All three of them, I think, genuinely believed that the American Revolution had been fought by 13 separate sovereign countries that joined together to wage war. We think of the motto of the revolution, no taxation without representation. What that meant to most Americans during the Revolution was no one had the right to tax us, but our colonial governments, now state governments. People who lived among us, people who earn their living, even if they might be richer, earn their living like we do, who understood our needs and who wanted that tax money to go into improving our state. The federal government was in their minds, an attack on this. It was an attack on the authority of the state governments to determine who they would trade with, what import duties they would charge.

1:14The federal government was going to be in charge of that. The federal government was going to make laws for all 13 states. I think Elbridge Gary thought that this was simply a rejection of the revolution. Mercy Otis Warren who was also from Massachusetts, who was one of the leading propagandists against the Constitution. Great Patriot of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams, who could be more of a patriot during the Revolution. All three of these people were ardent anti-federalists. Though I can't read their minds, I think that they genuinely believe that the Constitution was a denial of the goals of the Revolution. George Mason, I think, his biggest opposition was because the Constitution did not include a Bill of Rights. He had written the

2:14Declaration of Rights for Virginia in 1776. Edmund Randolph was somewhat wishy-washy throughout his entire political career. He had been governor of the state of Virginia at age 25, the Randolph family were among the ruling elites of Virginia. He began supporting Madison's proposals. In fact, he presented Madison's ideas for the Constitution to the convention, because Madison was this little guy who wasn't much of an orator, and Edmund Randolph was a tall, attractive, confident man. Madison asked him to present his agenda to the convention.

3:02Then as the convention went on, Edmund Randolph decided, I'm not sure as a Virginian, I like this. He refused to sign the ultimate Constitution. Then he supported the Bill of Rights. He served in Washington's cabinet, where sometimes he supported what we would call the federalist point of view, and sometimes he opposed it. He made decisions issue by issue instead of having really an overreaching ideology, and so those are the three men who did not sign the Constitution. [MUSIC]