Fifty-five delegates from twelve states assembled in Philadelphia on 25 May 1787. Only Rhode Island, which opposed national regulation of trade, refused to send a delegation. The delegates were the elite of the American republic: lawyers, merchants, physicians, planters, and at least nineteen slaveowners. Over half were college-educated, more than thirty were lawyers or had studied law, approximately forty had served in Congress, thirteen had held state offices, as many as twenty had helped write state constitutions, and one-third were Continental Army veterans. The delegates included Benjamin Franklin, Gouverneur Morris, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania; Alexander Hamilton of New York; and Edmund Randolph, George Mason, and James Madison of Virginia. (Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Jefferson did not attend the convention; he served as U.S. minister to France from 1785 to 1789.) They unanimously elected George Washington as president of the Constitutional Convention and voted to keep their deliberations secret. Men.....
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