It is January 28th. Welcome to Episode 28 of History in a Year. Today, the miracle at Philadelphia is complete. We stand in the room on September 17, 1787, as thirty-nine men step forward to sign the Constitution. But not everyone is celebrating. We hear the dark prophecies of the three men who refused to sign, warning of tyranny to come. We hear Benjamin Franklin’s final, humble prayer for unanimity. And we learn why the painting on the back of George Washington’s chair became the symbol of a new era.
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STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is January 28th. Welcome to Episode 28. Yesterday, we watched the Founding Fathers wrestle with the Presidency and the Electoral College. By mid-September 1787, the work was finally done.
LEAH:
The Convention had lasted four months. It was a grueling marathon. The delegates were exhausted, homesick, and broke. They had argued over every sentence, every comma, and every clause.
STEPHEN:
They sent the rough draft to a committee of style to polish the language—this is where Gouverneur Morris (the man with the wooden leg) wrote the famous Preamble: “We the People.”
LEAH:
And then, they sent it to a clerk named Jacob Shallus to be “engrossed”—written out in beautiful calligraphy on four large sheets of parchment.
STEPHEN:
On the morning of September 17, 1787, the delegates gathered in the Pennsylvania State House for the last time. The air was a little cooler than the sweltering heat of July, but the tension was higher than ever.
LEAH:
The parchment was laid out on the table. It was the blueprint for a new nation. But before they could sign it, there was a crisis.
STEPHEN:
Not everyone agreed with it. In fact, some of the most important men in the room were refusing to sign.
LEAH:
We often think of the Constitution as a perfect document that everyone loved. But on that last day, three men stood up and said, “No.”
STEPHEN:
The first was George Mason of Virginia. Mason was a giant of the Revolution. He was the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Jefferson had copied for the Declaration of Independence.
LEAH:
Mason was furious. He looked at the Constitution and saw a trap. He said it created a government that was too powerful. He predicted that the President would become a tyrant. He predicted that the Senate would become a corrupt aristocracy.
STEPHEN:
But his biggest objection was that there was no Bill of Rights. There was no protection for free speech, no protection against unreasonable searches, no guarantee of a trial by jury.
LEAH:
He famously said he would “sooner chop off his right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands.”
STEPHEN:
The second dissenter was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. He was worried about the standing army. He thought the federal government would use the army to crush the states.
LEAH:
And the third was Edmund Randolph. This was the most painful one. Randolph was the Governor of Virginia. He was the man who had presented the “Virginia Plan” on Day One!
STEPHEN:
But now, at the end, he got cold feet. He was worried the Constitution would be rejected by the people, and he didn’t want to ruin his political career by attaching his name to a failure.
LEAH:
This was a disaster. If these three men went home and campaigned against the Constitution, it might never be ratified. The whole summer would be wasted.
STEPHEN:
The room was tense. They needed someone to bring them together. They needed the old wizard. Benjamin Franklin.
LEAH:
Franklin was 81 years old. He was in pain. He couldn’t stand up to give a speech. So, he wrote his final thoughts on a piece of paper and asked his friend, James Wilson, to read it for him.
STEPHEN:
This speech is a masterpiece of political wisdom. Listen to what he said.
LEAH:
Wilson read: “Mr. President, I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them.”
STEPHEN:
He admitted the document wasn’t perfect. But then he said something profound. He said that when you assemble a group of men to get their wisdom, you also get all their “prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.”
LEAH:
He asked, “From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?”
STEPHEN:
He looked at the Constitution and said, “I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.”
LEAH:
Then, he turned to the dissenters. He didn’t attack them. He asked them, gently, to doubt their own infallibility. He asked them to sign the document not because it was perfect, but to present a united front to the world.
STEPHEN:
He proposed a clever trick. He moved that the signing be done “by the unanimous consent of the States present.”
LEAH:
This meant that even if individual delegates (like Mason) refused to sign, their *state* could still sign if the majority of that state’s delegation agreed. It allowed them to claim “Unanimity” on paper, even though the room was divided.
STEPHEN:
It worked. Washington stepped forward first.
LEAH:
He dipped his quill in the ink. He signed “Go: Washington, Presidt and deputy from Virginia.”
STEPHEN:
It was the signature that gave the document life. If Washington signed it, the people would trust it.
LEAH:
Then, the states signed in geographical order, from North to South. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut… all the way down to Georgia.
STEPHEN:
As the men were moving to the table to sign, Benjamin Franklin was watching George Washington.
LEAH:
Washington was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair. On the back of the chair, the carver had painted a sun with rays coming out of it.
STEPHEN:
Franklin leaned over to the delegate next to him and whispered. He said, “I have often, in the course of the session… looked at that [sun] behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.”
LEAH:
Painters often have trouble distinguishing a sunrise from a sunset. It looks the same.
STEPHEN:
Franklin continued: “But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”
LEAH:
It was the perfect metaphor. The “Rope of Sand” was gone. The new nation was rising.
STEPHEN:
Thirty-nine men signed the Constitution. Three refused (Mason, Gerry, and Randolph). But the deed was done.
LEAH:
The Convention adjourned at about 4:00 PM. The delegates walked out of the State House and headed to the City Tavern for a farewell dinner.
STEPHEN:
But before they got to the tavern, a famous interaction happened. And this is the story everyone remembers.
LEAH:
As Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall, a prominent Philadelphia society lady named Mrs. Elizabeth Powel stopped him. She was anxious. The secrecy was over, and she wanted to know what happened behind those locked doors.
STEPHEN:
She asked him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”
LEAH:
Franklin stopped. He looked at her. And he gave a short, chilling answer.
STEPHEN:
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
LEAH:
*If you can keep it.*
STEPHEN:
That is the challenge. He wasn’t promising that the Republic would last forever. He was saying that a Republic is fragile. It requires attention. It requires virtue. It requires the people to be vigilant.
LEAH:
He was saying that the Constitution is just a piece of paper. It doesn’t protect us. *We* have to protect *it*.
STEPHEN:
The delegates went home. They published the Constitution in the newspapers. And the reaction was… explosive.
LEAH:
The country split into two camps instantly. The “Federalists” (who supported the Constitution) and the “Anti-Federalists” (who hated it).
STEPHEN:
The Anti-Federalists were led by Patrick Henry—the man who said “Give me Liberty or Give me Death.” He looked at the Constitution and said, “I smell a rat.”
LEAH:
He thought the President was a King in disguise. He thought the Congress was too powerful. He screamed, “Where is the Bill of Rights?”
STEPHEN:
The fight for Ratification was going to be brutal. Nine states had to approve it for it to become law. It wasn’t a sure thing at all.
LEAH:
To win the argument, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay decided to write a series of newspaper essays explaining why the Constitution was necessary.
STEPHEN:
They wrote under the code name “Publius.” These essays became known as *The Federalist Papers*.
LEAH:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 29. The War of Words. We dive into the ferocious battle between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. We see how a few essays changed the mind of a nation, and how the promise of a “Bill of Rights” finally tipped the scales.
STEPHEN:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.