Why the
Doors Were Shut

The conventional explanation for the secrecy rule is deliberative freedom -- delegates needed to change their minds without being held to public positions. That explanation is real and documented. It is not the complete picture. The secrecy rule was adopted the day before the Convention was told it would be doing something its charter did not authorize. Timing is evidence.

The Continental Congress had called the Philadelphia Convention with a specific mandate. The Congressional resolution of February 21, 1787, authorized a convention "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the states render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of government."

Revise the Articles. Report proposed alterations. Get Congressional approval. Get state confirmation. That was the mandate.

The secrecy rule was adopted on May 28, 1787. On May 29, Edmund Randolph of Virginia rose and introduced fifteen resolutions known as the Virginia Plan. The Virginia Plan did not propose revisions to the Articles of Confederation. It proposed an entirely new government: a bicameral national legislature with proportional representation, a national executive chosen by the legislature, a national judiciary, and the power to override state laws. It was a replacement, not a revision.

The secrecy rule and the Virginia Plan: one day apart. The rule that prevented the public from knowing what was happening was in place before the delegates announced what they were going to do.

The Articles of Confederation contained their own amendment procedure. Article XIII: alterations to the Articles required agreement by Congress and confirmation by every state legislature. Unanimous consent. That was the law.

The Convention voted on September 10, 1787, that only nine of thirteen states needed to ratify the new Constitution for it to take effect. This decision -- made behind closed doors -- directly violated Article XIII. The legal framework the delegates had been sent to repair was being bypassed by the same body authorized to repair it.

The Convention replaced the document that contained this clause with a new document that required only nine states to take effect. They did it behind closed doors. No public announcement was made about the change in ratification threshold until the finished Constitution was published on September 17. By then the decision was made.

Three delegates refused to sign the finished Constitution: George Mason of Virginia, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, and Edmund Randolph of Virginia. Mason's objection was the absence of a bill of rights. Gerry and Randolph had additional concerns about the structure of the document.

Luther Martin of Maryland had left the Convention in August and returned to Maryland without signing. He then did something the secrecy rule had been designed to prevent: he published a detailed account of the Convention's proceedings in a pamphlet titled "The Genuine Information," presented to the Maryland legislature in November 1787. Martin disclosed that the Convention had exceeded its authorized purpose, that the nine-state ratification threshold violated the Articles, and that the nationalist faction had driven the proceedings from the outset.

Martin's account was not the majority view. The Constitution was ratified. The nationalist interpretation prevailed. But Martin's "Genuine Information" is the primary record of what a hostile witness saw in that room -- a delegate who believed the Convention had been captured by a faction, operated beyond its legal authority, and used secrecy to prevent scrutiny of decisions that could not have survived it.