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Constitutional Convention (United States)

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This article is about the original convention that created the U.S. Constitution. For that Constitution's method of changing itself, see Article Five of the United States Constitution.



Historical context[edit]

Before the Constitution was drafted, the nearly 4 million inhabitants[4] of the 13 newly independent states were governed under the Articles of Confederation, created by the Second Continental Congress. It soon became evident to nearly all that the chronically underfunded Confederation government, as originally organized, was inadequate for managing the various conflicts that arose among the states.[5]:4–5[6]:14–16 As the Articles of Confederation could only be amended by unanimous vote of the states, any state had effective veto power over any proposed change.[7] In addition, the Articles gave the weak federal government no taxing power: it was wholly dependent on the states for its money, and had no power to force delinquent states to pay.[7]


Another impetus for the convention was Shays' Rebellion. A political conflict between Boston merchants and rural farmers over issues such as property seizures for tax debts had broken out into an open rebellion. This rebellion was led by a former Revolutionary War captain, Daniel Shays, himself a small farmer with tax debts, who had never received payment for his service in the Continental Army. The rebellion took months for Massachusetts to put down completely, and some desired a federal army that would be able to put down such insurrections.

In September 1786, at the Annapolis Convention, delegates from five states called for a Constitutional Convention in order to discuss possible improvements to the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787. Rhode Island, fearing that the Convention would work to its disadvantage, boycotted the Convention and, when the Constitution was put to the states, initially refused to ratify it.[9]

The Convention[edit]

Independence Hall's Assembly Room


George Washington was unanimously elected president of the Convention,[10] and it was agreed that the discussions and votes would be kept secret until the conclusion of the meeting.[5]:11 Although William Jackson was elected as secretary, his records were brief and included very little detail. Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, supplemented by the notes of Robert Yates, remain the most complete record of the Convention.[5]:162–164 Throughout the debate, delegates constantly referred to precedents from history in support of their position. Most commonly, they referred to the history of England, in particular the Glorious Revolution (often simply called "The Revolution"), classical history (mainly the Roman Republic and the leagues of Greek city-states), and recent precedents from Holland and Germany.

Outside the Convention in Philadelphia, there was a national convening of the Society of the Cincinnati. Washington was said to be embarrassed. The 1776 "old republican" delegates like Elbridge Gerry (MA) found anything military or hereditary anathema. The Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia and New York convention was meeting to redefine its Confession, dropping the faith requirement for civil authority to prohibit false worship.[11] Protestant Episcopalian Washington attended a Roman Catholic Mass and dinner.[12] Revolution veteran Jonas Phillips, of the Mikveh Israel Synagogue, petitioned the Convention to avoid a national oath including belief in both Old and New Testaments. Merchants of Providence, Rhode Island, petitioned for consideration, though their Assembly had not sent a delegation.[13]

Manasseh Cutler came directly from the capital in New York and found himself a frequent dinner guest among the delegates. He carried grants of five million acres to parcel out among The Ohio Company and "speculators", including some who were attending the Convention.[a] A Philadelphia guest of Robert Morris, Noah Webster would write a pamphlet immediately after the signing. "Leading Principles of the Federal Convention" advocated adoption of the Constitution. It was published much earlier and more widely circulated than today's better known Federalist Papers.[15]

James Madison's blueprint[edit]


James Madison, the author of the Virginia Plan

The Convention agreed on several principles. Most importantly, they agreed that the Convention should go beyond its mandate merely to amend the Articles of Confederation, and instead should produce a new constitution outright. While some delegates thought this illegal, the Articles of Confederation were closer to a treaty between sovereign states than they were to a national constitution, so the genuine legal problems were limited.[6]:64 Another principle they agreed on was that the new government would have all the powers of the Confederation Congress, plus additional powers over the states.[6]:64 Once agreeing on these principles, the Convention voted on the Virginia plan and signaled their approval for it. Once this was done, they began modifying it.


The division of the legislature into an upper and lower house wasn't questioned either, despite the obscure origins of the English House of Lords and its role as the representative of the hereditary nobility.[6]:82 Americans had seldom known any but bicameral legislatures, both in Britain and in most state governments. The main exceptions to this were the dysfunctional Confederation Congress and the unicameral Pennsylvania legislature, which was seen as quickly vacillating between partisan extremes after each election.[6]:82 Experience had convinced the delegates that an upper house was necessary to tame the passions of the lower classes against the interests of wealthy merchants and landowners. Since America had no native hereditary aristocracy, the character of this upper house was designed to protect the interests of this wealthy elite, the "minority of the opulent," against the interests of the lower classes, who constituted the majority of the population.[6]:85[16]

On Thursday, June 7, it was proposed that senators should be chosen directly by the state legislatures, instead of by popular vote, as this method was more likely to preserve the power of the upper classes. Convention delegate Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts observed that "the great mercantile interest and of stockholders, is not provided for in any mode of election-they will however be better represented if the State legislatures choose the second branch."[16] The proposal was carried unanimously.



The delegates also agreed with Madison that the executive function had to be independent of the legislature. In their aversion to kingly power, American legislatures had created state governments where the executive was beholden to the legislature, and by the late 1780s this was widely seen as being a source of paralysis.[6]:82 The Confederation government was the ultimate example of this.

Furthermore, in the English tradition, judges were seen as being agents of the King and his court, who represented him throughout his realm.[10] Madison believed that in the American states, this direct link between state executives and judges was a source of corruption through patronage, and thought the link had to be severed between the two, thus creating the "third branch" of the judiciary which had been without any direct precedent before this point.[10] Madison, however, did not believe that the judiciary should be truly independent, but rather beholden to the legislature rather than the executive. At the Convention, some sided with Madison that the legislature should choose judges, while others believed the president should choose judges. A compromise was eventually reached that the president should choose judges and the Senate confirm them.[6]:84


The early debate[edit]





Most accepted the desire among the slave states to count slaves as part of the population, although their servile status was raised as a major objection against this. The Three-Fifths Compromise assessing population by adding the number of free persons to three-fifths of "all other persons" (slaves) was agreed to without serious dispute.[6]:119 In 1783, when attempting to assess a national taxation system, the Confederation Congress had considered a three fifths ratio, which did not achieve unanimity.[6]:119[17] This compromise resulted in a large coalition of states, including the small slave states of South Carolina and Georgia, backing the Virginia plan and thus expanding the power of the primary coalition. That the lower house was to be elected directly by the voters was also accepted without major dispute.[6]:119

Front side of the Virginia Plan

More contentious than the lower house was the question of the upper house. Few agreed with Madison that its members should be elected by the lower house. James Wilson suggested election by popular vote versus election by state legislature, but his proposal was shot down 10-1 by the delegates.[18] Most delegates didn't question the intelligence of the voters,[citation needed] rather what concerned them was the slowness by which information spread in the late 18th century.[6]:122

At the time of the Convention, they noted that local newspapers said little of current events, and what little they had was sketchy and dated. Local papers even said little about the meeting of the Convention.[citation needed] Alexander Hamilton proposed extending the term in office for senators to life, considering earlier proposals of four and seven years inefficient to enable the "rich and well born" to have a "distinct, permanent share in the government," which could "check the imprudence of democracy."[16] Moreover, Hamilton proposed that senators not be elected directly by the general public, but by "electors" chosen for that purpose.


The delegates couldn't agree on whether the executive should be a single person, or a board of three. Many wished to limit the power of the executive and thus supported the proposal to divide the executive power between three persons.[6]:134 The possible problems of this system, in addition to the knowledge that George Washington would probably be the first president,[citation needed] calmed the fears enough so that the proponents of a singular executive could accumulate a large coalition.[6]:134 This issue came up occasionally after the matter was settled, but was never again seriously doubted.



As the Convention was entering its second full month of deliberations, it was decided that further consideration of the prickly question of how to apportion representatives in the national legislature should be referred to a committee composed of one delegate from each of the eleven states that were present at that time at the Convention. The members of this "Grand Committee," as it has come to be known, included Elbridge Gerry, Oliver Ellsworth, Robert Yates, William Paterson, Gunning Bedford, Jr., George Mason, William Davie, John Rutledge, Abraham Baldwin, and Benjamin Franklin. In its report to the Convention on July 5, the committee offered a compromise. The large states had opposed the Connecticut Compromise, because they felt it gave too much power to the smaller states. The Grand Committee's proposal added the requirement that revenue bills originate in the lower house and not be subject to modification by the upper house (although this Origination Clause would later be modified so that revenue bills could be amended in the upper house, or Senate).[6]:199With this modification, the Convention in a close vote adopted the compromise on July 16. Nationalist delegates remained bitterly opposed, however, until on July 23 they succeeded in further modifying the compromise to give members of the Senate individual voting power, rather than having votes taken by each state's representatives en bloc, as had occurred in Congress under the Articles of Confederation.[19] This accomplished the nationalist goal of preventing state governments from having a direct say in Congress's choice to make national laws.[20] The final document was thus a mixture of Madison's original "national" constitution and the desired "federal" Constitution that many of the delegates sought.[6]:199

The first draft[edit]

The Convention adjourned from July 26 to August 6 to await the report of the Committee of Detail, which was to produce a first draft of the Constitution. It was chaired by John Rutledge, with the other members including Edmund Randolph, Oliver Ellsworth, James Wilson, and Nathaniel Gorham.

Though the committee did not record minutes of its proceedings, three key surviving documents offer clues to the committee's handiwork: an outline by Randolph with edits by Rutledge, extensive notes and a second draft by Wilson, also with Rutledge's edits, and the committee's final report to the Convention.[21]:168 From this evidence it is thought that the committee used the original Virginia Plan, the decisions of the Convention on modifications to that plan, and other sources, such as the Articles of Confederation, provisions of the state constitutions, and even Charles Pinckney's plan, to produce the first full draft,[6]:269–270[21]:165 which author David O. Stewart has called a "remarkable copy-and-paste job."[21]:165


Much of what was included in the committee's report consisted of numerous details that the Convention had never discussed but which the committee correctly viewed as uncontroversial and unlikely to be challenged; and as such, much of the committee's proposal would ultimately be incorporated into the final version of the Constitution without debate.[21]:169 Examples of these details included the Speech and Debate Clause, which grants members of Congress immunity for comments made in their jobs, and the rules for organizing the House of Representatives and the Senate.



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.[6]:273–274[21]:170–171 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."[6]:274[21]:171–172 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.[6]:274–275[21]:172 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.[21]:172


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.[6]:269,275[21]:173 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.[6]:275[21]:173–174


Further modifications and concluding debate[edit]

Another month of discussion and relatively minor refinement followed, during which several attempts were made to alter the Rutledge draft, though few were successful. Some wanted to add property qualifications for people to hold office, while others wanted to prevent the national government from issuing paper money.[21]:187 Madison in particular wanted to push the Constitution back in the direction of his Virginia plan.





Near the end of the Convention, Gerry, Randolph, and Mason emerged as the main force of opposition. Their fears were increased as the Convention moved from Madison's vague Virginia Plan to the concrete plan of Rutledge's Committee of Detail.[21]:235 Some have argued that Randolph's attacks on the Constitution were motivated by political ambition, in particular his anticipation of possibly facing rival Patrick Henry in a future election. The main objection of the three was the compromise that would allow Congress to pass "navigation acts" with a simple majority in exchange for strengthened slave provisions.[21]:236 Among their other objections was an opposition to the office of vice president.




Drafting and signing[edit]





Rhode Island never sent delegates, and two of New York's three delegates did not stay at the Convention for long. Therefore, as George Washington stated, the document was executed by "eleven states, and Colonel Hamilton."[21]:244 Washington signed the document first, and then moving by state delegation from north to south, as had been the custom throughout the Convention, the delegates filed to the front of the room to sign their names.

At the time the document was signed, Franklin gave a persuasive speech involving an anecdote on a sun that was painted on the back of Washington's Chippendale chair.[25] As recounted in Madison's notes:


The Constitution was then submitted to the states for ratification, pursuant to its own Article VII.[27]

Proposed plans[edit]

Several plans were introduced, with the most important plan being that of James Madison (the Virginia Plan). The Convention's work was mostly a matter of modifying this plan. Charles Pinckney also introduced a plan, although this wasn't considered and its exact character has been lost to history. After the Convention was well under way, the New Jersey Plan was introduced though never seriously considered.[6]:230 It was mainly a protest to what some delegates thought was the excessively radical change from the Articles of Confederation.[6]:230 Alexander Hamilton also offered a plan after the Convention was well under way, though it included an executive serving for life and therefore the delegates felt it too closely resembled a monarchy.[6]:137 Historians are unsure how serious he was about this, and some have speculated that he may have done it to make Madison's plan look moderate by comparison.[6]:137 The Connecticut Compromise wasn't a plan but one of several compromises offered by the Connecticut delegation. It was key to the ultimate ratification of the constitution, although was only included after being modified by Benjamin Franklin in order to make it more appealing to larger states.[6]:199

Virginia Plan[edit]

Main article: Virginia Plan
The Virginia Plan

Prior to the start of the Convention, the Virginian delegates met and, drawing largely from Madison's suggestions, came up with what came to be known as the Virginia Plan, also known as the Large State Plan.[28] For this reason, James Madison is sometimes called the Father of the Constitution.[28] Presented by Virginia governor Edmund Randolph on May 29, 1787, the Virginia Plan proposed a very powerful bicameral legislature.[28] Both houses of the legislature would be determined proportionately.[28] The lower house would be elected by the people, and the upper house would be elected by the lower house.[28] The executive would exist solely to ensure that the will of the legislature was carried out and would therefore be selected by the legislature.[28] The Virginia Plan also created a judiciary, and gave both the executive and some of the judiciary the power to veto, subject to override.

New Jersey Plan[edit]

Main article: New Jersey Plan
The New Jersey Plan

After the Virginia Plan was introduced, New Jersey delegate William Paterson asked for an adjournment to contemplate the Plan.[28] Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had equal representation in Congress, exercising one vote each.[28] The Virginia Plan threatened to limit the smaller states' power by making both houses of the legislature proportionate to population. On June 14 and 15, 1787, a small-state caucus met to create a response to the Virginia Plan. The result was the New Jersey Plan, otherwise known as the Small State Plan.[28]

Paterson's New Jersey Plan was ultimately a rebuttal to the Virginia Plan, and was much closer to the initial call for the Convention: drafting amendments to the Articles of Confederation to fix the problems in it.[28] Under the New Jersey Plan, the existing Continental Congress would remain, but it would be granted new powers, such as the power to levy taxes and force their collection.[28] An executive branch was created, to be elected by Congress (the plan allowed for a multi-person executive).[28] The executives would serve a single term and were subject to recall on the request of state governors.[28] The plan also created a judiciary that would serve for life, to be appointed by the executives.[28] Lastly, any laws set by Congress would take precedence over state laws.[28] When Paterson reported the plan to the Convention on June 15, 1787, it was ultimately rejected, but it gave the smaller states a rallying point for their interests.[28]

Hamilton's plan[edit]

The Hamilton Plan

Unsatisfied with the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan, Alexander Hamilton proposed his own plan. It also was known as the British Plan, because of its resemblance to the British system of strong centralized government.[28] In his plan, Hamilton advocated virtually doing away with state sovereignty and consolidating the states into a single nation.[28] The plan featured a bicameral legislature, the lower house elected by the people for three years. The upper house would be elected by electors chosen by the people and would serve for life.[28] The plan also gave the Governor, an executive elected by electors for a life-term of service, an absolute veto over bills.[28] State governors would be appointed by the national legislature,[28] and the national legislature had veto power over any state legislation.[28]

Hamilton presented his plan to the Convention on June 18, 1787.[28] The plan was perceived as a well-thought-out plan, but it was not considered, because it resembled the British system too closely.[28] It also contemplated the loss of most state authority, which the states were unwilling to allow.

Pinckney's plan[edit]

The Pinckney Plan

Immediately after Randolph finished laying out the Virginia Plan, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina presented his own plan to the Convention. As Pinckney did not write it down, the only evidence of the plan are Madison's notes,[29] so the details are somewhat vague. It was a confederation, or treaty, among the thirteen states. There was to be a bicameral legislature made up of a Senate and a House of Delegates. The House would have one member for every one thousand inhabitants. The House would elect Senators who would serve by rotation for four years and represent one of four regions. Congress would meet in a joint session to elect a President, and would also appoint members of the cabinet. Congress, in joint session, would serve as the court of appeal of last resort in disputes between states. Pinckney did also provide for a supreme Federal Judicial Court. The Pinckney plan was not debated, but it may have been referred to by the Committee of Detail.[30]

Connecticut Compromise[edit]

The Connecticut Compromise, forged by Roger Sherman from Connecticut, was proposed on June 11.[28] In a sense it blended the Virginia (large-state) and New Jersey (small-state) proposals. Ultimately, however, its main contribution was in determining the apportionment of the Senate, and thus retaining a federal character in the constitution. Sherman sided with the two-house national legislature of the Virginia Plan, but proposed "That the proportion of suffrage in the 1st. branch [house] should be according to the respective numbers of free inhabitants; and that in the second branch or Senate, each State should have one vote and no more."[28] This plan failed at first, but on July 23 the question was finally settled.[28]

What was ultimately included in the constitution was a modified form of this plan. In the Grand Committee, Benjamin Franklin successfully proposed the requirement that revenue bills originate in the house. But the final July 16 vote on the compromise still left the Senate looking like the Confederation Congress. In the preceding weeks of debate, Madison, King, and Gouverneur Morris each vigorously opposed the compromise for this reason.[31] Then on July 23, just before most of the convention's work was referred to the Committee of Detail, Morris and King moved that state representatives in the Senate be given individual votes, rather than voting en bloc, as they had in the Confederation Congress. Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, a leading proponent of the compromise, supported their motion, and the Convention adopted it.[19] As the personally powerful senators were to receive terms much longer than the state legislators who appointed them, they became substantially independent. The compromise nonetheless continued to serve the self-interest of small-state political leaders, who were assured of access to more seats in the Senate than they might otherwise have obtained.[20]


Among the most controversial issues confronting the delegates was that of slavery. Slavery was widespread in the states at the time of the Convention.[21]:68 Twenty-five of the Convention's 55 delegates owned slaves, including all of the delegates from Virginia and South Carolina.[21]:68–69 Slaves comprised approximately one-fifth of the population of the states;[32]:139 and apart from northernmost New England, where slavery had largely been eliminated, slaves lived throughout all regions of the country.[32]:132 The majority of the slaves (more than 90%),[32]:132 however, lived in the South, where approximately 1 in 3 families owned slaves (in the largest and wealthiest state, Virginia, that figure was nearly 1 in 2 families).[32]:135 The entire agrarian economy of the South was based on slave labor, and the Southern delegates to the Convention were unwilling to accept any proposals that they believed would threaten the institution.



Another contentious slavery-related question was whether slaves would be counted as part of the population in determining representation of the states in the Congress, or would instead be considered property and as such not be considered for purposes of representation.[33] Delegates from states with a large population of slaves argued that slaves should be considered persons in determining representation, but as property if the new government were to levy taxes on the states on the basis of population.[33] Delegates from states where slavery had become rare argued that slaves should be included in taxation, but not in determining representation.[33]

Finally, delegate James Wilson proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise.[28] This was eventually adopted by the Convention.


The states had originally appointed seventy representatives to the Convention, but a number of the appointees did not accept or could not attend, leaving 55 delegates who would ultimately craft the Constitution.[34]

Almost all of the fifty-five delegates had taken part in the Revolution, with at least twenty-nine having served in the Continental forces, most in positions of command.[35] All but two or three had served in colonial or state government during their careers.[6]:65 The vast majority (about 75%) of the delegates were or had been members of the Confederation Congress, and many had been members of the Continental Congress during the Revolution.[21]:25 Several had been state governors.[6]:65[35] Just two delegates, Roger Sherman and Robert Morris, would be signatories to all three of the nation's founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.[35]

More than half of the delegates had trained as lawyers (several had even been judges), although only about a quarter had practiced law as their principal means of business. There were also merchants, manufacturers, shippers, land speculators, bankers or financiers, two or three physicians, a minister, and several small farmers.[6]:65–68[35] Of the twenty-five who owned slaves, sixteen depended on slave labor to run the plantations or other businesses that formed the mainstay of their income. Most of the delegates were landowners with substantial holdings, and most, with the possible exception of Roger Sherman and William Few, were very comfortably wealthy.[6]:66–67 George Washington and Robert Morris were among the wealthiest men in the entire country.[35]


Several prominent Founders are notable for not participating in the Constitutional Convention. Thomas Jefferson was abroad, serving as the minister to France (nonetheless, Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, would describe the delegates approvingly as a gathering of "demi-gods").[36]:13 John Adams was in Britain, serving as minister to that country, but he wrote home to encourage the delegates. Patrick Henry refused to participate because he "smelt a rat in Philadelphia, tending toward the monarchy." Also absent were John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Many of the states' older and more experienced leaders may have simply been too busy with the local affairs of their states to attend the Convention,[6]:65 which had originally been planned to strengthen the existing Articles of Confederation, not to write a constitution for a completely new national government.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Manasseh Cutler was a Congregationalists minister and former Army chaplain from Massachusetts. He arrived directly from lobbying success in New York City during the Northwest Ordinance negotiations at the Articles Congress.[14]


  2. ^ Odesser-Torpey, Marilyn (2013). Insiders' Guide to Philadelphia & Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Morris Book Publishing, LLC. p. 26. Retrieved November 10, 2015. 
  3. ^ Rossiter, Clinton (1987). 1787: The Grand Convention. W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-30404-6. Retrieved November 10, 2015. 
  7. ^ a b Articles of Confederation, Art. 13.
  9. ^ The Ratification of the Constitution National Archives
  12. ^ Bowen 2010, p. 22.
  16. ^ a b c Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787. Robert Yates.
  17. ^ The Three-Fifth Compromise
  19. ^ a b 2 THE RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787, at 94–95 (Max Farrand ed., 1911)
  20. ^ a b See Laurence Claus, Power Enumeration and the Silences of Constitutional Federalism
  21. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac Stewart, David O. (2007). The Summer of 1787. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-8692-3. 
  22. ^ United States Postage Stamps
  24. ^ Speech of Benjamin Franklin - The U_S_ Constitution Online - USConstitution_net
  25. ^ a b "Rising Sun" in The Constitutional Convention of 1787: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of America's Founding, Vol. 1 (ed. John R. Vile: ABC-CLIO, 2005), p. 681.
  26. ^ Madison Notes for September 17, 1787.
  31. ^ 1 THE RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787, at 489, 490, 551 (Max Farrand ed., 1911)
  33. ^ a b c Constitutional Rights Foundation. "The Constitution and Slavery". Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved September 15, 2016. 


External links[edit]