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committee, decisions were always tentative and never binding in the same way they would have been if voted upon by the Convention. Only after a thorough ventilating of the issues would the Committee of the Whole turn themselves back into a sitting of the Convention and formally approve what they had just discussed in the Committee.
       The object of the Founders was to seek a consensus or general agreement on what the Constitution should provide. After four months of debate they were able to reach general agreement on just about everything except the issues of slavery, proportionate representation, and the regulation of commerce. All three of these issues had to be settled by compromise.
       It is a mistake however, to describe the rest of the Constitution as a "conglomerate of compromises," because extreme patience was used to bring the minds of the delegates into agreement rather than simply force the issue to finality with a compromise. This is demonstrated in the fact that over 60 ballots were taken before they resolved the issue of how to elect the President. They could have let the matter lie after the first ballot, but they did not. They were anxious to talk it out until the vast majority felt good about the arrangement. That is why it took 60 ballots to resolve the matter.
       When the Founders had finished their work on September 17, 1787, President Washington attached a letter to the signed draft and sent it to the Congress. The Congress ratified the Constitution without any changes and sent it to the states. When several of the larger states threatened to reject the Constitution, they were invited to ratify the main body of the Constitution but attach suggested amendments. They submitted 189! At the first session of Congress, these suggested amendments were reduced to 12 by James Madison, and 10 of them were finally approved and ratified by the states. Thus was born America's famous Bill of Rights.

    The Balanced Center
       This was the polemic process by which the Founders struggled to get the American eagle firmly planted in the balanced center of the political spectrum. James Madison later described the division of labor between the states and the federal government as follows:
       "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State." 9
       The fixing of the American eagle in the center of the spectrum was designed to maintain this political equilibrium between the people in the states and the federal government. The idea was to keep the power base close to the people. The emphasis was on strong local self-government. The states would be responsible for internal affairs and the federal government would confine itself to those areas which could not be fairly or effectively handled by the individual states. This made the Founders' political spectrum look approximately like this:
       

    America's Three-Headed Eagle
       Although Polybius, John Locke, and Baron Charles de Montesquieu had all advocated the separation of the governmental functions into three departments -- legislative, executive, and judicial -- the American Founders were the first to carefully structure what might be described as a three-headed eagle.
       
       The central head was the law-making or legislative function with two eyes -- the House and the Senate -- and these must both see eye-to-eye on any piece of legislation before it can become law. A second head is the administrative or Executive Department with all authority centered in a single, strong President, operating within a clearly defined framework of limited power. The third head is the judiciary,