The Bill of Rights. Syl Sobel

       The Constitutional Convention

      By 1787, leaders of the states realized that they needed to work together as one country. That summer, all of the states except Rhode Island sent representatives to meet in Philadelphia. The representatives at that meeting decided to create a new government for all of the states, which was called a national government, and to write rules for that government. These rules were called the Constitution of the United States, and the meeting was called the Constitutional Convention.

      We call the people who wrote the Constitution the Framers or the Founders. The fifty-five Framers at the Constitutional Convention were smart and well educated. Many of the brightest, most respected, and most important people in the United States at that time were there. The convention took place in the Pennsylvania State House, which was the same place where some of the Framers had met eleven years earlier to approve the Declaration of Independence. That building is now called Independence Hall.

      The Framers elected General George Washington of Virginia, the military hero of the Revolutionary War, as president of the convention. James Madison, a small, modest, well-respected member of Congress from Virginia, wrote an initial plan for a constitution and was the convention’s secretary. Benjamin Franklin, the famous writer, publisher, and inventor from Pennsylvania, at age 81, was the elder statesman of the group. Legend has it that sometimes he fell asleep in his chair during long and boring speeches. After all, it was a hot summer in Philadelphia, and the Framers closed the State House windows so that no one outside could hear what they were doing. But notes of the convention, most of them kept by Madison, show that Franklin also offered wise advice at several important moments.

       James Madison

      John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, two well-known leaders of the Revolution, were not at the convention. Adams was the U.S. minister to England. Jefferson was the U.S. minister to France. They did, however, follow the progress of the convention through letters that some of the Framers wrote to them.