purposes. Known as the “three-fifths clause,” this concept became part of Article I of the US Constitution.
Other Matters Besides debating what form the new government would take and
what specific powers it should have, other issues that consumed the delegates’ time during the Constitutional Convention included how senators should be chosen, how long a senator’s term should be, what the requirements for running for president and Congress should be, how long a president’s term should be, and whether Congress should have the power to impeach the president.
It is believed that Richard Dobbs Spaight, from North Carolina, deserves credit for the idea that senators should be chosen by their state legislatures (a system that remained in place until 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment provided for the direct election of senators). And credit for the idea that a senator’s term should be limited to six years goes to North Carolina’s Hugh Williamson (al- though some delegates believed that once elected a senator should hold his office for life).
As for who should be able to run for president and for Congress, a good number of delegates believed that the right to run for Congress should be reserved for members of the landowning class, and they initially tried to establish a minimum property requirement for these offices. Charles Pinckney, a delegate from South Carolina, for ex- ample, proposed that only those with property worth at least $100,000 (about $2.5 million in today’s dollars) should be eligible to run for president and that congressmen should be required to have estates worth at least $50,000. Pinckney’s proposal was defeated, but the delegates did not at first give up the idea of restricting positions in Congress to those with property. In discussing the office of
the presidency, various term lengths,
ranging from six years to life terms, were discussed during the convention, but the delegates finally decided that the term should be four years. As for the power of impeachment, Gouverneur Morris and Charles Pinckney both objected to a motion that called for the inclusion in the Constitution of a clause that would allow the presi- dent to be impeached by Congress, arguing that if Congress had the power to impeach the president, he would be dependent on the legislature’s goodwill. Benjamin Franklin countered this argument by pointing out that a provision for impeachment was actually a good thing for the president, who might otherwise be assassinated. Morris eventually changed his mind, and it was ultimately decided that the president should be impeachable by Congress.
Writing and Signing the US Constitution
After many long weeks of debate, discussion, argument and counterargument, the Constitution was finally finished. Credit for its actual wording is attributed to Gouverneur Morris, who was a mem- ber of the Committee of Style and served as the committee’s scribe. Jacob Shallus, an assistant clerk of the Pennsylvania State Assem-
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