Who Is Abraham Baldwin?

He is a person that arguably played one of the most meaningful roles in the history of our country and yet is practically unknown. He was a Yale College tutor who had recently moved to Georgia, which was still in its infancy as a state. He was selected as one of the two delegates sent to Philadelphia in 1787 to discuss revisions to the Articles of Confederation. This convention moved far beyond that pre-text to become the genesis of the Constitution.

One of the first major disagreements among the state delegates at the convention was the power of larger states over smaller states. James Madison and his Virginia Plan favored the larger states by giving them more votes that the smaller ones. The New Jersey Plan was proposed and supported by the smaller states to have the same number of votes for each state. The debate lasted almost the entire month of June and became so contentious that the convention was close to being disbanded.

Roger Sherman, one of the delegates from Connecticut, proposed a compromise (now called the Connecticut Compromise) wherein the national government would consist of two houses, one with representation based on state size and one with representation of two people for every state. This was a reasonable compromise, but it had to be voted upon by the convention. Five voted in favor of the compromise (CT, NJ, DE, MD, and NY) while five voted against it (VA, PA, MA, NC, SC). It was down to Georgia to provide the tie-breaker since neither New Hampshire or Rhode Island chose to send delegates to the convention.

One Georgia delegate voted against the measure and so it was down to Abraham Baldwin to make the final decision. If he voted against the measure, it was likely the convention would end (and with no Constitution ever created!). If he voted for the measure, the vote would be deadlocked and a method to resolve the issue would have to be decided. But he would face the possible stigma of having negated the voice of the state he was representing. Baldwin voted in favor of the measure. The committee later appointed (of which he was a member) determined to pass the measure by reasoning that the two small non-attending states would have voted for the measure.

So why should you care about this little moment in history? Well, I'm sure this will interest some of my blog readers because Abraham Baldwin, the man who arguably saved the Constitution, was also the founder of the first state-chartered school of higher learning - the University of Georgia.