Many of us admire the U.S. Constitution today, but few have spent much time thinking about the process that helped put that Constitution in place.

Having read David O. Stewart’s account of the 1787 Constitutional Convention a couple of years ago, your correspondent looked forward to Richard Beeman’s lengthier exploration of the same subject in Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution.

Readers will no doubt finish the book with greater appreciation of the fact that the design, approval, and implementation of the U.S. Constitution faced a number of challenges ? many of which could have derailed the entire process.

North Carolina readers might enjoy the following passage discussing this state’s role in ensuring support for the “Connecticut Compromise,” which determined representation in the two chambers of the new Congress. An impasse between large states, which preferred proportional representation, and small states, which wanted equal representation, threatened to end the entire constitutional debate. A compromise set up the system we have today: a House with proportional representation and a Senate giving each state two votes.

[T]he five positive votes came from four small states ? Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland ? joined by North Carolina. Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia rejected the compromise. Masachusetts was divided. …

The one significant shift from the previous votes on the issue was that of North Carolina. Some part of the explanation may lie in the fact that William Blount, who had sided with Madison and other large-state delegates previously, was abset, having traveled to New York to serve in the Continental Congress. It is also likely that Hugh Williamson, certainly the most distinguished member of the North Carolina delegation, had come around to see that compromise on the issue of representation in the Senate was essential to the success of the Convention. Earlier that month, on July 2, speaking in support of creating a committee to arrive at a compromise on the matter, Williamson had warned that “if we do not concede on both sides, our business must soon be at an end.” Writing to North Carolina governor Richard Caswell after the fact, he commented on “how difficult a part has fallen to the share of our state in the course of this business,” going on to conclude that his state’s actions on the critical business of the Convention may well “have contributed to the happiness of millions.” Whether through Williamson’s powers of persuasion or through a common recognition that compromise was essential, three of North Carolina’s delegates ? Williamson, William Davie, and Alexander Martin ? voted in favor of the compromise, with only Richard Dobbs Spaight opposing it.