Drafting and Ratifying the Constitution. From May 25 to September 17, 1787, delegates from 12 states met in what is now Independence Hall at Philadelphia to “form a more perfect Union” and establish a government that would “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” The Constitutional Convention was one of the most remarkable bodies ever assembled. Not only were there leaders in the fight for independence, such as Roger Sherman and John Dickinson, and leading thinkers just coming into prominence, such as Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson, and Federalist Papers authors James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, but also legendary figures, such as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, who was chosen as president of the Convention. Every state was represented, except for Rhode Island, which feared a strong national government and refused to send delegates. Adams declared the three-and-a-half month convention “the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.” Jefferson described it as “an assembly of demigods.”
From the Committee of Detail and the Committee of Style Gouverneur Morris produced a final draft that the delegates revised. On the Convention’s last day, September 17, 1787, now celebrated as Constitution Day, Benjamin Franklin, the 81-year-old patriarch of the group, praised the Constitution as possibly the best ever written. He observed of the sun painted on the back of George Washington’s chair: Now, “I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.” The 39 delegates who remained through the four months, representing 12 states, signed the Constitution and sent it to the Congress of the Confederation, and the Convention officially adjourned.
