Baloney!
The convention was stampeded to the idea of a NEW Constitution before there had been any real attempt at doing what they had specifically been sent to Philadelphia to do! That is precisely why every single member of the New York delegation save Hamilton went home and refused to participate!
Not exactly. The Convention was called by the authority of the states, not the Confederation Congress. The instrument for calling the Convention was the report written by the failed Annapolis Convention a year earlier. (I have to thank Congressman Billybob for setting me straight on this one.) Congress had nothing to do with the process of calling the Convention. Thus the Convention was owned by the states, not Congress.
When it looked like the Convention was actually going to be held, Congress decided to board the train before it left the station – yes, I recognize this is an anachronism – by issuing an opinion that the Convention should stick to amending the Articles of Confederation, not start from scratch. But that opinion from Congress was merely advisory, and the states were under no compulsion to take it seriously. They didn’t.
The Convention was a sovereign body whose sovereignty was defined by the states, and the states ending up taking whole swaths of the Articles, renumbering them, adding them to a new document, and attaching a whole lot of new material generated by Madison that set up three branches of government. The Convention had this right, and this was the path chosen by the delegates.
Stampeded? Not necessarily. Hamilton’s five hour Grand Design speech that opened the Convention – without a single break at the pissing trough – framed the issue in the most radical way. Hamilton proposed a president with monarchical powers who would appoint the state governors, and a Congress with veto power over all acts of the state legislatures. This was in accordance with John Jay’s dream of reducing the states to administrative subdivisions of a national government.
But Hamilton’s speech had no takers. No one was stampeded. George Washington uttered the polite 18th Century equivalent of, “Next!”, and things went on. Hamilton got some of what he wanted, but not enough.
You are correct in stating that a number of people, including two-thirds of the New York delegation, didn’t like which way things were going and walked out. They should have stayed and made their case. As it was, the States’ Men’s case was made by Luther Martin of Maryland, an alcoholic who could speak interminably and say little of note. The Colliers’ Decision in Philadelphia addresses the problems with Martin.
Rather than talking about being stampeded, it is better to say that the Nationalists took control because the States’ Men could not come up with a cogent case for retaining the Articles.