“Unlocking Humanity: The Surprising Secret Behind What Makes Us Truly Human”
After everyone signed, Franklin would further muse while looking at a painting of the sun on the chair George Washington, who had presided over the assembly, sat in,
“Often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, [I] looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.”
As to what happened after they all signed, according to George Washington, the remaining delegates all went out to City Tavern and had a party of sorts.
It was done.
…Well, almost. There was still the matter of the Bill of Rights.
Wherever There is an Interest and Power to Do Wrong, Wrong Will Generally Be Done
Enter James Madison once again. There is a reason he is named the Father of the Constitution, from his pivotal role in coming up with the Virginia Plan, to, as William Pierce would state, “in the management of every great question he evidently took the lead in the Convention… he always comes forward as the best informed man of any point in debate,” to the aftermath, with his considerable efforts helping to prevent the calling of a second constitutional convention to potentially throw out or heavily re-write the first one. He also in the aftermath wrote almost 100 essays expounding on elements of the proposed Constitution in order to help persuade the various states to ratify it.
During the course of all this, Madison would change his mind on one thing. He became convinced a Bill of Rights should be added as soon as possible, writing to Thomas Jefferson on October 17, 1788, a few months after the Constitution was ratified, that while he didn’t feel it was strictly necessary to have one given the way the new U.S. Government was setup, and with many states already defining this, he nonetheless felt it would be beneficial, mirroring Adams’ argument on the matter, writing, “Wherever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done, and not less readily by a powerful & interested party than by a powerful and interested prince.”
