Unfortunately, when Secretary Jackson’s notes were finally published, Madison seems to have felt it necessary to amend his own records to match those of the secretary, and he has been severely criticized for it.  When Madison died fifty years later – the last survivor of that remarkable gathering – his widow sold the manuscripts, now much less complete and accurate, to Congress, and the entire journal was eventually published in 1840.

There was much criticism of the secrecy rule; even Jefferson did not like it when he heard.  Yet it is difficult to see how a Constitution could ever have evolved had the Convention been open to the public’s comments and suggestions.  Sentries were placed at the State House doors; members could not copy the daily journal without permission.  But secrecy in legislative assemblies was nothing new; all the Revolutionary colonial assemblies had been held in secrecy; the First Continental Congress had been so out of necessity, and even the current Congressional debates were still not reported.  And Americans knew very well that for centuries already unauthorized visitors had not been allowed in the British House of Commons.

It was typical George Washington to lament his lack of qualification and to call on God to help, whether it was his nomination as commander in chief of the army, as president of the Federal Convention, or as President of the United States.  Neither was it false modesty.  To his colleagues, it was reassuring.  Here was a man of great prestige, of magnificent physical appearance, with landed estate, yet he was a genuinely humble man.  Certainly he was not a ready or accomplished speaker; throughout the next four months, Washington sat silently in the Convention, and only on the very last day did he rise to take part in the debates.  Jefferson, who served with Washington in the Virginia legislature, and with Dr. Franklin in Congress, testified afterwards that he “never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which was to decide the question.”  But in their silence lay their strength.  Washington’s presence kept the Federal Convention together, kept it going, just as his presence had kept a straggling, ill-conditioned army together all through the terrible years of war.

As the delegates drifted into Philadelphia, local newspapers announced their arrival, pleased and proud that the Convention was meeting in their city instead of New York’s City Hall, where Congress sat.  The newspapers, plainly proud of the social and political distinction of the representatives, used an elaborate social classification: there was Excellency for governors of states; Honorable for justices and chancellors; then honorable again – with a small h – for Congressmen, and ending up with a list of respectable characters.  The traditions of the mother country were apparently not so easily shed.

There was no limit set on members for the delegations from each state, and Pennsylvania, for obvious reasons, was represented by the most – eight in all, including Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris, Governeur Morris (no relation to Robert), a witty, worldly politician, whose grasp of the ways of men and governments was unexcelled.  There was Thomas Mifflin, prominent businessman, political leader, former quartermaster general of the Continental Army and participant in the infamous Conway Cabal; two of Philadelphia’s foremost merchants, Thomas FitzSimons and George Clymer; a canny lawyer-politician named James Wilson, and Jared Ingersoll, son of the Jared Ingersoll who had tangled so many years ago with Connecticut’s Sons of Liberty over his appointment as a Stamp Act collector.  The younger Jared had since renounced his father’s Loyalist sympathies and had made his home in Philadelphia.

Virginia’s seven-man delegation was perhaps the most prominent, both socially and politically, and the Old Dominion was justifiably proud of her showing.  The Convention Journal listed two Excellencies – General Washington and Governor Edmund Randolph; one Honorable, Judge John Blair, and four Esquires – the peerless James Madison, George Mason, whose fame and eloquence as a spokesman for human rights were second only to Thomas Jefferson; George Wythe, the influential jurist and professor of law; and James McClurg.  Patrick Henry was conspicuous by his absence; named to the Convention, he had refused to attend.  “I smell a rat in Philadelphia,” Mr. Henry had snorted.  James Madison conjectured that he had declined so that he would be freer to oppose the new charter if he disliked it.  John Adams, however, had been far more realistic when he had observed that there was a breed of Violent Men, skillful and dedicated in the intrigues of revolution, but often lacking the qualities to erect a government.  Better hands at pulling down than at building, he had observed.

Sam Adams, too, remained in Boston.  He had not been named to the Convention, and he was suspicious “of a general revision of the Confederation.”  Though he came around in the end, Sam Adams long opposed the new Constitution vigorously.  Neither was Tom Paine on the scene.  He had gone to Europe, hoping to promote his newly invented iron bridge, for which he had failed to find backers in America.

No other state could match the talents from Virginia and Pennsylvania, but there were good and capable men from all over – Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, and scholarly William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut; there was the distinguished John Dickinson of Delaware, the Pennsylvania Farmer, whose letters in the 1760s had sharpened many a colonial’s sense of the issues.  If Massachusetts had had no Adams available for once, and if John Hancock had just been elected governor, the state was nevertheless well represented by the likes of Elbridge Gerry and Rufus King.  There were John Rutledge and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, and William Paterson of New Jersey.  New York’s three-man contingent, appointed by Governor Clinton’s anti-nationalistic faction, was smaller than it might have been, but Alexander Hamilton had enough talent and nationalistic zeal for an entire delegation.

Taken together, this assemblage was rich in political experience, legal training, and worldly wisdom and accomplishments.  Their social and economic backgrounds varied, but the men were predominantly of established families and of comfortable, even affluent circumstances.  More than half had at least some college training; the majority, in fact, were lawyers and the rest merchants and farmers-planters.  32 of the 55 members were to become future leaders in United States affairs – among them two Presidents, two Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, and six future state governors.

Yet it was a young gathering by modern-day standards; men aged sooner and died earlier in those days, and Benjamin Franklin’s 81 years were certainly the exception; even George Washington at 55 was already above average age.  John Adams at 37, invited to give a speech in Boston at the very beginning of the Revolutionary period, had already claimed that he was “too old to make declamations.”  At Convention time, Charles Pinckney was only 29; Alexander Hamilton 32, Governeur Morris – he of the suave and worldly manner – was 35, and even the staid and careful legal scholar, James Madison, the Father of the Constitution was only 36 years old.  Yet Richard Henry Lee wrote from Virginia that he was glad to find in the Convention “so many gentlemen of competent years.”  But even the youngest member was already politically experienced.  Nearly three-quarters had sat in the Continental Congress.  Many had been members in their states’ legislatures and had helped write their state constitutions.  Eight had signed the Declaration of Independence, seven had been state governors, and 21 had fought in the Revolutionary War.  When Thomas Jefferson in Paris read the list of names, he said it was “an assembly of demi-gods.”

On May 13 there was a great commotion outside Mrs. House’s lodging house: General Washington had arrived, escorted by the City Light Dragoons and hailed by the pealing of the Liberty Bell, the booming of artillery and the applause of great crowds of people.  Mrs. House had prepared her best rooms for the General, only to see the financier Robert Morris carry him off to his fine brick mansion, leaving her to hope that she could fill the rooms with Presbyterians or abolitionists, or members of the Society of the Cincinnati, all of whom were also then conventioneering in the nation’s first city.

It was, in fact, the presence of the Society of the Cincinnati that had become an embarrassment to General Washington.  Composed of officers who had served under him during the Revolutionary War, the veterans were a suspect society, considered a political threat, as veteran organizations have always been.  But there was particular objection to the Cincinnati; these gentlemen, “panting for nobility,” could well become the nucleus of an American aristocracy or of a Cromwellian military government.  What’s more, none other than General Washington was the president of the Society of the Cincinnati!  Back at Mount Vernon, the General had already told his friends that the coincidence of the Society’s meeting at the same time as the Convention would be enough reason for his staying away.  It had required the combined efforts of Madison, Hamilton, and Washington’s special friend, General Knox, to get General Washington to Philadelphia at all.

Washington, always slow to make up his mind, had been plagued by misfortunes earlier in the year.  In January his brother John Augustine had died, and the General’s letters sounded troubled, making it plain that he had no wish to risk his reputation in a movement that might fail.  In March, Washington was attacked by rheumatism so severe that he could scarcely move.  But he recovered and made the journey to Philadelphia by carriage.

During the entire summer the General stayed at the home of Robert Morris as his guest.  Washington had always liked and respected Morris, who was a notoriously controversial figure in America.  Born in England, he had come to America at a very young age and had been in business at sixteen.  During the war and later it was said he had accomplished miracles in keeping the government solvent.  But he had been violently abused in the press, his business methods publicly investigated, eventually forcing him to resign his office as superintendent of finance for all the states.  Still, he had been appointed a member of the Federal Convention, and was known to be the richest man in all Philadelphia.  But if Morris’ rise had been spectacular, his fall would be no less so.  He would spend three years in the Prune Street debtor’s prison, ruined, like many other businessmen, by speculation in the Western territories, unable to sell his lands or even pay the taxes on them.

But this was still in the future.  That spring of 1787, when General Washington was his guest, Robert Morris and his family lived splendidly.  They had an ice house and a hothouse and stable room for twelve horses, and a summer residence on the banks high above the Schuylkill River.  A French visitor declared that Morris’ luxury was not to be outdone “by any commercial voluptuary of London.”  Personally, Robert Morris was a big, good-humored man, a hard worker, direct and forceful in conversation, though at the Convention he seems to have spoken only rarely.

Others may have matched James Madison in their understanding of the problems before them, but no one equaled him in preparations for the convention.  A man of both action and thought, he had busied himself in New York City, hoping to win Congressional authorization to revise the Articles of Confederation, and organizing his own thoughts.  He kept in touch with Thomas Jefferson in Paris and with George Washington at Mount Vernon, and he was pleased to have the general support for a “thorough reform of the present system.”  He was even more pleased to learn that General Washington, after much consideration, had decided to attend the Convention.  Madison had spent many a long evening in New York refining his own views, jotting them down in his small, even handwriting.  It was easy enough for him to list the many faults of the Confederation – its weakness and instability, its inability to control the factious states – and he did so in a 3,000-word essay.  But what would take the place of this Confederation?  By the time Madison had left Manhattan early in May, he had already fashioned the plan that would provide the central strategy for the delegates who were about to assemble in Philadelphia.

One of Madison’s colleagues in the Convention said that he was always the best informed delegate on any subject that came up for debate.  This was hardly an accident; he had made a thorough study of political issues, greatly assisted by the dozens of books which his close friend Thomas Jefferson sent him from Europe.  These enabled him to make a detailed study of ancient and modern confederacies, and which convinced him of the “mortal ills” in the existing American Articles of Confederation.  His purpose in attending the Convention was to transform the shaky Confederacy into a solid and unified nation for the benefit of all its components.  “If men were virtuous,” he reminded the Convention at one point, “there would be no need of government at all.”

Americans were uncommonly fortunate, as they had been in 1776, to have so many able men; most of the leaders of 1776 were still present and available for service, with neither their vision nor their grasp having been impaired by a decade of revolution and independent government.  74 delegates had been named to represent their states at Philadelphia; in the end 55 turned up, comprising the most outstanding leadership any country might have been able to offer.  Congress, sitting in New York, complained of losing so many of its ablest members to the Convention at Philadelphia.  Since the end of the war it had been difficult enough to obtain a quorum.  Members simply stayed home, preferring state interests to the general government.  Letters had to be sent out regularly urging attendance.  Thus Congress was in bad enough shape without its best-qualified men setting out for Pennsylvania, and the situation got so bad that in April ’87 a motion was actually brought to adjourn and move to Philadelphia.  But the measure failed; the members undoubtedly felt that Congress had moved often enough already.  Since 1774 the harried legislature had met in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, Annapolis, and Trenton – chased most often be developments during the war or, in one instance, by mutinying ill-paid soldiers of the Pennsylvania militia.

Two of the best minds, however, were absent from Philadelphia, and if the Convention was to miss their presence, their influence was felt throughout the deliberations.  John Adams was in London as minister to the Court of St. James, though his book on constitutions past and present, just off the press, circulated among the members, receiving praise or scorn according to the reader’s general views.  And Thomas Jefferson was in Paris, arranging treaties of commerce and foreign loans and trying to persuade the powers – France, Holland and the rest – that the infant United States could be trusted to meet obligations and pay her debts.  Both men, however, were vitally interested in the Convention, and a steady stream of letters went back and forth.

Philadelphia’s most prominent citizen was without a doubt Benjamin Franklin.  Only two years earlier, Doctor Franklin had come home after nearly nine years abroad.  Even before that he had traveled back and forth to London, first as negotiator for Pennsylvania’s interests in England, and then during the Stamp Act troubles as agent for several of the colonies.  After Independence he had been sent to France by Congress to try for an alliance; before he sailed he lent his impoverished government £4,000 from his own purse.  Parisians adored him, with his simple clothes, his famous fur cap and unpowdered gray hair.  It was during those years that he became an international celebrity – so popular that crowds followed him wherever he went in the French capital.  Franklin was no Quaker, but neither was he at pains to deny it; he well knew the romantic French admiration for Les Quakeurs de Philadelphie.  Yet Franklin’s character had always been a puzzling one to his own countrymen.  America was proud of the Doctor, proud that he had “tamed the lightning” and that he was received everywhere as a citizen of the world.  But a citizen of the world is inevitably suspect at home.  Samuel Adams, for instance, never rid himself of the belief that Franklin was a Tory at heart, and to certain circles in Boston and Philadelphia no man could be so much at home in Europe and remain pure in his private morals – especially not a man whose own son had already declared himself openly a Loyalist.

Still, in 1785, Franklin had returned to Philadelphia, no less popular in his chosen hometown, and soon after he was elected President of Pennsylvania.  Franklin, however, was hardly an imposing figure; visitors, in fact, were often disappointed to find the famous Doctor a “short, fat trunched old man in plain Quaker dress, bald pate, and short white locks,” who enjoyed sitting hatless under a tree in his garden on a warm day.  Now 81 years old, plagued by the gout and various other ailments, the patriarch nevertheless made occasional tours through his beloved Philadelphia.  Much of the city was filled with memories for him.  There was Christ Church, where had served thirty years earlier as the manager of a lottery to raise money for the steeple, and there were the Presbyterian churches and Friends’ meeting houses he had so often attended.  There was the Philosophical Society, which he had helped found and over which he had presided for many years.  Down on Fifth and Chestnut there was City Hall and farther on the Library Company, the first subscription library in all America, which he had conceived way back in 1731.  And down on Chestnut Street, too, there was the long facade of the State House, the most famous building in the city, if not in all America, the same building known to future generations as Independence Hall.

Much of Benjamin Franklin’s life was linked to this State House.  Here he had been a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he had supported a petition to the king, had drawn up a plan of Union, and had organized the first post office; and it was Franklin, of course, who was appointed the first postmaster general.  In this building, too, he had signed the Declaration of Independence, after serving on the drafting committee with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and others.  Here he was alleged to have said, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”  Franklin had still been in Paris when the Articles of Confederation were signed in this same building, but now he was back, and this spring of 1787 the State House was being readied for the grandest occasion of them all – the Constitutional Convention.

Atop Independence Hall stood the Liberty Bell, which had rung out the news of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and of Revolutionary War victories.  It had been cast in England, for no colony was equipped to make a bell like this, weighing over a ton.  It had arrived cracked in Philadelphia and had to be crudely recast by a local firm.  When the redcoats had threatened the city, the Liberty Bell had been smuggled out of Philadelphia and been ignominiously submerged in a New Jersey river.  Now it was back in place, still ringed by the noble sentiment:  “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof.”