September 17, 1787: The Constitution Is Signed — “A Republic, If You Can Keep It”

The Rising Sun Chair in Independence Hall. NPS photo.

"A republic, if you can keep it."
— Benjamin Franklin, when Elizabeth Willing Powel asked him, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"

Monday, September 17, 1787

Franklin's appeal

The day opened with a prepared speech by Franklin (PA). At eighty-one, and in pain from gout and a kidney stone, he couldn't read it himself, so Wilson (PA) read it for him.

It was addressed to Washington (VA), the Convention's president, but aimed at the three delegates who had said they would not sign — Gerry (MA), Randolph (VA) and Mason (VA).

• Humility: he didn't approve of several parts of the Constitution, Franklin said, but wasn't sure he never would — a long life had taught him to doubt his own judgment more, and respect others' more.
• With all its faults: he agreed to it because a general government was necessary; any form of government could be a blessing if well run, and this one likely would be for years — ending in despotism only when the people became corrupt enough to need it.
• No better to be had: another convention, as Mason and Randolph wanted, would do no better. An assembly of so many able men with so many views couldn't produce a perfect plan; he was astonished this one came "so near to perfection." He consented "because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best."
• The plea: he hoped every member with objections would "doubt a little of his own infallibility" and sign, to show unanimity.

He then moved a form for the signing: "Done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present, the seventeenth of September, &c. In witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names."

The wording was really Gouverneur Morris's (PA), passed to Franklin to lend it his prestige. It doesn't say a signer endorses the Constitution — only that the states present approved it unanimously. The idea was to let Gerry, Mason and Randolph sign without their objections mattering.

Washington speaks, once

Gorham (MA), seconded by King (MA) and Carroll (MD), moved to let Congress enlarge the House from one representative per 40,000 people to one per 30,000 — an option, not a requirement. Such proposals had failed again and again.

Now, on the last day, Washington spoke for the only time. As president it was usually improper for him to give his view, he said, but he backed the motion: a larger House would add to the "security of the rights and the interests of the people." No one spoke against it, and it passed unanimously. Jacob Shallus, the scribe who had written out the engrossed copy the day before, corrected the text.

Last words for and against

• Randolph, almost apologetic again, left open supporting the Constitution when Virginia considered it — but predicted that nine states, the number needed for it to take effect, would fail to ratify, and confusion would follow.
• G. Morris and Williamson (NC) urged the holdouts to sign. So did Hamilton (NY): no one's ideas were further from the plan than his, Madison records him saying, but how could anyone weigh "anarchy and convulsion" against the chance of good from the plan?
• Blount (NC) said his signature would only attest the states' unanimity, not show support.
• Franklin personally begged Randolph to sign. Randolph replied that the form changed nothing: signing would imply support, and he didn't support it. Refusing, he said, might be the most awful step of his life, but his conscience left him no choice. Offering the people the Constitution to take or leave whole, without amendments, would bring the very "anarchy and civil convulsions" the signers feared. Gerry spoke to the same effect.
• Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (SC) disliked the form's ambiguity: he supported the Constitution and meant his signature to say so.
• Ingersoll (PA) took a middle course: his signature was his recommendation of the result as, "all things considered," the "most eligible."

Franklin's form passed, 10 states in favor and South Carolina divided — C. C. Pinckney and Butler wanted wording that backed the Constitution more strongly. The Convention then voted to leave its official journals — far less detailed than Madison's own notes — with Washington.

The signing

• Thirty-eight men signed thirty-nine names: Dickinson (DE), ill with a headache, had asked Read (DE) two days earlier to sign for him.
• Gerry, Randolph and Mason still refused.
• Hamilton, the only New Yorker left, signed for himself, since one delegate couldn't represent New York.
• Signatures were grouped by state; Pennsylvania's eight were the most. The state names beside them seem to be in Hamilton's hand. Rhode Island, the only state that sent no delegates, isn't listed.

Then the Convention adjourned for the last time.

The signatures had no legal force. The Constitution would take effect only when nine of the thirteen states ratified it. After four hard months, the real challenge — persuading the American people — lay ahead.

A rising sun

As the last names went on, Franklin remarked to a few members on the half-sun carved on Washington's chair. Painters, he said, find it hard to show a rising sun as different from a setting one. All session, between hope and fear, he had looked at it without knowing which it was — "but now at length, I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising and not a setting sun."

In short

• Despite repeated appeals, Gerry, Randolph and Mason refused to sign.
• In his longest speech of the Convention, Franklin called the Constitution "near to perfection."
• Delegates disagreed on what their signatures meant, but thirty-nine names went on the document.
• Signing didn't make it law: nine of thirteen states had to ratify.

Around the Convention

• The delegates dined at City Tavern.
• McHenry (MD) recorded in his diary the exchange between Franklin and Elizabeth Willing Powel quoted above.
• Johnson (CT) paid his bills: 29 shillings for meals at City Tavern, 25 shillings for washing, five dollars for servants, 1 shilling 6 pence for watch repair, and $22.00 of buckles.
• Mason (VA) drew a bill on Lieutenant Governor Beverly Randolph for fifty pounds in Virginia money, to repay Robert Morris (PA) for a loan to get home.
• Washington dined with colleagues, did some business — recommending the coach maker Clark to William Washington and friends, signing forty diplomas for Rhode Island members of the Society of the Cincinnati, and accepting an engraving from Robert Edge Pine — took the Convention's papers from Secretary Jackson, and "retired to meditate on the momentous work which had been executed" after more than four months of sittings of five, six, sometimes seven hours a day.

Philadelphia today

• The fall session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer and General Gaol Delivery, which tried serious crimes such as robbery, arson, rape and murder, opened in the State House courtroom across the hall, with Chief Justice Thomas McKean and Justices William Augustus Atlee and George Bryan.
• The printers Dunlap and Claypoole made 500 official copies of the Constitution — thirteen survive — for the delegates, newspapers, the state legislatures and the Confederation Congress in New York. They carry a typo: the clause protecting the slave trade from amendment until 1808 reads "one thousand seven hundred and eight." Washington's copy has "seven" crossed out and "eight" written in by hand.

The series: The Constitutional Convention: A Day-by-Day Account for September 1787 · previous: September 16, 1787: A Final Recess

Sources

Based on "September 17, 1787: A Republic, If You Can Keep It," The Constitutional Convention: A Day-by-Day Account, Independence National Historical Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source gives the vote on the form of signing as 10–1; South Carolina was divided, not opposed, and this page says so.