Benjamin Franklin Reads the Room at Philadelphia

The summer of 1787 was the hottest anyone in Philadelphia could remember. Inside the State House, eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin sat quietly while younger men argued and shouted around him. For weeks, the delegates had been trying to build something the world had never seen before — a constitution for a free nation. But the small states and the large states could not agree on how many votes each should have in the new Congress. Tempers flared like candles in the wind. Some men threatened to leave. Some threatened worse. Franklin's fingers ached from the gout that had crept into his joints. His aide had to carry him to the session each morning in a special chair. But his mind — sharp as any compass needle — never wavered. On the final morning before the vote to accept or reject the whole document, the room fell heavy with doubt. Franklin slowly rose. Every eye turned toward him. "I confess," he said, his voice steady and low, "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. The older I grow, the more I doubt my own judgment." He paused, and the room breathed again. "I cannot help expressing a wish," he continued, "that every member of the Convention who may still have objections would, with me, doubt a little of his own infallibility." Silence settled like morning dew. One by one, thirty-nine delegates stepped forward and signed. Franklin pointed to the carved sun on the back of General Washington's chair. "I have often wondered," he said softly, "whether it was a rising or a setting sun. Now I know. It is rising." And it was. It still is.