On the morning of June 18, 1787, Colonel Alexander Hamilton of New York rose in Convention and — having said nothing of consequence for the first three weeks of debate — held the floor for the better part of the day. What followed was the longest and most controversial speech of the Convention: a defense of energetic, hereditary-tending government, drawn openly from the British constitution and aimed squarely at both the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan then on the table.
Madison's Notes preserve the day as one uninterrupted argument, ending without a vote. No resolution was taken; the speech was, in Hamilton's own words, offered only "for the deliberation of the Committee."
The two plans before the House
The Convention had spent the previous week measuring the Virginia Plan — a supreme national legislature apportioned by population — against the New Jersey Plan, which would have preserved the Articles of Confederation with only limited additional powers. Hamilton, dissatisfied with both, proposed a third scheme, more consolidated than either.
Hamilton's plan, in his own frame
He would establish an Assembly elected by the people for three years, and a Senate elected — indirectly, through electors — to serve during good behavior. He would grant the executive, similarly chosen and serving during good behavior, an absolute negative on the acts of both houses. State governors would be appointed by the general government. State laws contravening the constitution or laws of the union would be void.
"I have well considered the subject, and am convinced that no amendment of the Confederation can answer the purpose of a good Government, so long as State sovereignties do, in any shape, exist."
The argument for permanence
Hamilton argued that "the great and essential principles necessary for the support of Government" were, in his reading of Hume and of the British Parliament, an interest, opinion, habit, force, and influence sufficient to hold the state together. Short terms and frequent elections he thought insufficient to produce these effects. The Senate and executive must therefore be secured, so far as republican principle would allow, against the winds of momentary faction.
He was careful to protest that he did not mean to introduce monarchy — only to imitate its "excellencies," while retaining republican forms.
Reactions in the chamber
Madison records no immediate rebuttal on the floor. But Hamilton's speech was widely understood — by Yates and Lansing, the other New York delegates, and afterward by the Anti-Federalists at large — as evidence that the Convention harbored designs upon the states well beyond what the calling states had authorized. Yates and Lansing left the Convention within days and did not return.
What did not happen
Hamilton's plan was never formally moved. It appears in Madison's Notes as a proposed alternative rather than a resolution. The Convention returned the next day to debate on the Virginia Plan, which Madison and Wilson defended vigorously. The compromise that would eventually produce the ratified Constitution — two houses, one apportioned by population and one giving each state equal weight — was still weeks away.
Why this day matters
Two threads of American constitutional argument begin here. The first is the Federalist thread that Hamilton himself would carry through the ratification debates and into Federalist Papers Nos. 68 through 77 — an executive with vigor, tenure, and independence. The second is the Anti-Federalist alarm that a government of "energetic" powers, once erected, could not be recalled by the people who erected it. Neither thread was resolved on June 18. Both remain in the record for you to weigh.