Free Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution: A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence by Richard Beeman Page A

the States so ratifying the Same.
    Having exceeded their instructions from the Continental Congress by scrapping the Articles of Confederation and drafting a wholly new frame of government, the framers of the Constitution also ignored the provision in the Articles of Confederation requiring unanimous approval of the state legislatures in order to amend that frame of government. The decision to allow the Constitution to go into operation after the approval of only nine of the thirteen states made it much easier to secure ratification of the document. Moreover, the device of submitting the document for consideration by specially called state conventions rather than by state legislatures avoided some of the natural tendencies of state legislators to protect their powers and interests. Most important though, the use of conventions, elected directly by the people of the states and called together solely for the purpose of considering the new plan of union, signified that the proposed new government was intended to be a government founded on “We the People of the United States,” rather than merely on “we the states.”
    Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have here-unto subscribed our Names.
    Attest William Jackson, Secretary
Go. Washington, President and deputy from Virginia
    There were forty-one delegates present in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House on September 17, 1787. Thirty-eight of the delegates in the room signed the completed Constitution, with George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts refusing to add their assent. A forty-second delegate, John Dickinson of Delaware, had been suffering from debilitating headaches and went home a few days earlier, but he asked his Delaware colleague George Read to sign the document for him, bringing the total number of signatories to thirty-nine.
    DELAWARE
Geo. Read
Gunning Bedford Jr.
John Dickinson
Richard Bassett
Jaco. Broom
     
    MARYLAND
James McHenry
Dan of St. Thos. Jenifer
Danl. Carroll
     
    VIRGINIA
John Blair
James Madison Jr.
     
    NORTH CAROLINA
Wm. Blount
Richd. Dobbs Spaight
Hu Williamson
     
    SOUTH CAROLINA
J. Rutledge
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Pinckney
Pierce Butler
     
    GEORGIA
William Few
Abr. Baldwin
     
    NEW HAMPSHIRE
John Langdon
Nicholas Gilman
     
    MASSACHUSETTS
Nathaniel Gorham
Rufus King
     
    CONNECTICUT
Wm. Saml. Johnson
Roger Sherman
     
    NEW YORK
Alexander Hamilton
     
    NEW JERSEY
Wil. Livingston
David Brearley
Wm. Paterson
Jona. Dayton
     
    PENNSYLVANIA
B. Franklin
Thomas Mifflin
Robt. Morris
Geo. Clymer
Thos. FitzSimons
Jared Ingersoll
James Wilson
Gouv. Morris

AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION
    The framers of the original Constitution assumed that it was not necessary to include a “bill of rights” in their proposed plan for the union. The ostensible reason for the omission was that most of the state constitutions already possessed bills of rights, and therefore the inclusion of a bill of rights in the federal Constitution would be redundant. Another, more compelling reason may have been that when the idea of a bill of rights was raised in early September by Virginia delegate George Mason, the members of the Convention, tired and desperate to return home, feared that a debate on the subject might extend their stay in Philadelphia by many weeks, if not months.
    The omission of a bill of rights proved to be both a tactical and strategic error. When the Constitution was submitted to the states for ratification, many of the critics of the Constitution pointed to the absence of a bill of rights as a fatal flaw in the document. As a consequence, the supporters of the Constitution, who called themselves Federalists, came forward with a promise to make the drafting of a bill of