<P> However, Rutledge, himself a former state governor, was determined that while the new national government should be stronger than the Confederation government had been, the national government's power over the states should not be limitless; and at Rutledge's urging, the committee went beyond what the Convention had proposed . As Stewart describes it, the committee "hijacked" and remade the Constitution, altering critical agreements the Convention delegates had already made, enhancing the powers of the states at the expense of the national government, and adding several far - reaching provisions that the Convention had never discussed . </P> <P> The first major change, insisted on by Rutledge, was meant to sharply curtail the essentially unlimited powers to legislate "in all cases for the general interests of the Union" that the Convention only two weeks earlier had agreed to grant the Congress . Rutledge and Randolph worried that the broad powers implied in the language agreed on by the Convention would have given the national government too much power at the expense of the states . In Randolph's outline the committee replaced that language with a list of 18 specific "enumerated" powers, many adopted from the Articles of Confederation, that would strictly limit the Congress' authority to measures such as imposing taxes, making treaties, going to war, and establishing post offices . Rutledge, however, was not able to completely convince all of the members of the committee to accept the change . Over the course of a series of drafts, a catchall provision (the "Necessary and Proper Clause") was eventually added, most likely by Wilson, a nationalist little concerned with the sovereignty of individual states, giving the Congress the broad power "to make all Laws that shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof ." Another revision of Wilson's draft also placed eight specific limits on the states, such as barring them from independently entering into treaties and from printing their own money, providing a certain degree of balance to the limits on the national government intended by Rutledge's list of enumerated powers . In addition, Wilson's draft modified the language of the Supremacy Clause adopted by the Convention, to ensure that national law would take precedence over inconsistent state laws . </P> <P> These changes set the final balance between the national and state governments that would be entered into the final document, as the Convention never challenged this dual - sovereignty between nation and state that had been fashioned by Rutledge and Wilson . </P> <P> Another set of radical changes introduced by the Committee of Detail proved far more contentious when the committee's report was presented to the Convention . On the day the Convention had agreed to appoint the committee, Southerner Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, had warned of dire consequences should the committee fail to include protections for slavery in the Southern states, or allow for taxing of Southern agricultural exports . Pinckney and his fellow Southern delegates must have been delighted to see that the committee had included three provisions that explicitly restricted the Congress' authority in ways favorable to Southern interests . The proposed language would bar the Congress from ever interfering with the slave trade . It would also prohibit taxation of exports, and would require that any legislation concerning regulation of foreign commerce through tariffs or quotas (that is, any laws akin to England's "Navigation Acts") pass only with two - thirds majorities of both houses of Congress . While much of the rest of the committee's report would be accepted without serious challenge on the Convention floor, these last three proposals would provoke outrage from Northern delegates and slavery opponents . </P>

What took place at the constitutional convention of 1787