Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania proposed popular election. “If the people should elect,” Morris said, “they will never fail to prefer some man of distinguished character, or services; some man, if he might so speak, of continental reputation.”

Objections came from George Mason of Virginia, who thought “the extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the Candidates”— and other Southern delegates who feared domination by the largest states. “The most populous States by combining in favor of the same individual will be able to carry their points,” said Charles Pinckney of South Carolina.

Southern opposition came with obvious subtext. By population, South Carolina was the seventh largest of 13 states. Maryland was the sixth. North Carolina was the third. And Virginia was a colossus — the largest state in the incipient union. But large minorities of their residents were enslaved. In Virginia, it was roughly 40 percent, giving the state a smaller voting population than its more populous neighbors to the north.

Hugh Williamson of North Carolina made this point explicit in his objection: Because there won’t always be “distinguished characters” with national recognition who could win a majority of votes, “the people will be sure to vote for some man in their own State, and the largest State will be sure to succeed.” But this will not be Virginia, “since her slaves will have no suffrage.”

James Madison, another Virginian, actually favored popular election of the president but saw the writing on the wall. “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern states,” he said a few days later as discussion continued, “and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes.”

Debate over executive election began in mid-July. It resumed in late August, and the framers settled on a solution in early September, less than two weeks before the convention would adjourn. Their compromise centered on an idea introduced at the start of the discussion: Instead of direct election or election by legislature, states would choose electors who would then elect the president and vice president from a group of candidates. To preserve an element of popular election, each state would receive electors equal to its congressional delegation, which would also account for states with large enslaved populations, since the convention had already reached agreement on how to count slaves for legislative apportionment. If no candidate received a majority, the election would go to Congress.

The historian Jack Rakove notes how few of the framers “expected the electors to do anything more than nominate candidates.” They would winnow the field, and then elected representatives would actually choose the president.