To see the full record of a committee, click on the corresponding committee on the map below.
Cite as: lchervinsky, ‘The Grand Committee of Postponed Questions Rejected a Council’ in Lindsay Chervinsky, Advising the President, Quill Project at Pembroke College (Oxford, 2016), item 88.
(To read a specific commentary item, please click on its link.)
Commentary
When the Grand Committee delivered its final report to the Convention, they did not recommend including a privy council or any other type of advisory council. No notes or meeting minutes survive to suggest why the Committee rejected a council. On September 7, however, Gouverneur Morris, did offer one explanation. In response to George Mason's motion to attach a council to the executive, Morris argued that "The question of a Council was considered in the Committee, where it was judged that the [President] by persuading his Council, to concur in his wrong measures, would acquire their protection from them."
Associated event
Approved for publication
None