Philadelphia Summers and the U.S. Constitution
The United States Constitution is a document that is central to political and historical discussions on a daily basis, with the text of both the initial document and its amendments receiving word-by-word skepticism in order to craft and justify modern policy. However, with all of the discussion about guarantees of republican forms of government and well regulated militias, it can be easy to lose sight of just how such an influential document was created: in a boiling hot room in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, forged through months of boisterous arguments between confident and powerful men.
This 1940 painting, Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States by Howard Chandler Christy, is one of the most iconic visuals that comes to mind when discussing the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It currently hangs in Capitol Building, on the House of Representatives side.
The convention began in May of 1787, and ran until September of the same year. The summer of the convention was a particularly balmy one, and while exact temperatures are difficult to find, delegates from New Jersey to South Carolina remarked about how unpleasant conditions were. Despite this, in order to maintain secrecy and independence from a potentially riotous and manipulative public, Independence Hall (then simply the Pennsylvania State House) was famously shuttered with windows and doors locked shut, and commercially available air conditioning technology was still over a century away. This heat perhaps exacerbated some disagreements between state delegates and contributed to the atmosphere of fierce debate about many aspects of the Constitution, including the heavily disputed bicameral legislative system.
The Assembly Room in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall — not only was the U.S. Constitution signed in this room, but the Declaration of Independence had been as well.
Despite this, the delegates were not afraid to stick around for the long run to reach their goal of establishing a more effective government, as while the convention was initially conceived as a meeting to amend the Articles of Confederation, the participants decided to create the U.S. Constitution instead, believing that the Articles were unsalvageable. In about four months, the new law of the land was created, with Revolutionary War veteran and future president George Washington serving as the presiding officer of the convention sitting upon a chair symbolically adorned with a rising sun.
Due to the difficulties of the time, convening and operating a convention was significantly more hazardous in 1787 than today. The convention was supposed to start on May 14th, but the delegates did not even reach a quorum of selected members present to formally begin proceedings until 11 days later. Initially, 74 delegates were selected to be a part of the process. However, due to varying reasons (but mostly travel difficulties) 55 delegates participated in creating the Constitution, with only 39 being present at the conclusion of the convention to sign the document itself. Rhode Island did not even have a single delegate present at Independence Hall at all, leading to some inevitable controversy when the state was asked to ratify a document it had no official part in creating.
The trunk which George Washington used to store his papers from the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Today, it is in the custody of the National Museum of American History.
It can be humbling to remember how much of the structure of the world’s longest-lasting representative democracy can be traced back to a group of a few dozen sweaty, opinionated men shouting at one another inside of a locked down building a few summers into America’s newfound independence. Historic America has a podcast series coming up focused on Philadelphia history, where the Constitutional Convention in Independence Hall will be covered in additional detail—you can find that as well as our other historical podcast content here.