Congress votes to send the new Constitution to the states for approval
Eleven days after delegates in Philadelphia signed a new charter of government, the Congress of the Confederation had to decide whether to let the country vote on it at all. In September 1787, the Congress of the Confederation, the sitting national legislature under the Articles of Confederation, voted to transmit the Constitution to the thirteen state legislatures for ratification. Congress did not endorse or condemn the document; it simply passed it along. The decision put the country's future government in the hands of state conventions rather than Congress itself.
This vote marks the moment the old confederation government stepped aside for the new republic:: the very Congress the Constitution would abolish did not stand in its way. That single procedural act opened the ratification fight in the states, which would consume the next ten months and produce The Federalist Papers and some of the closest votes in American founding history.
QWhy did the Philadelphia Convention take eleven days longer than scheduled just to start?
The Convention was set to open May 14, 1787, but on that day only the Pennsylvania and Virginia delegations had actually arrived in the city. Bad roads, slow travel, and the sheer distance some delegates had to cover from states like Georgia and New Hampshire meant the other delegations trickled in over the following days. A working quorum of seven states was not reached until May 25, more than a week late. That delay meant the entire summer of drafting and debate was compressed into less time than organizers had originally hoped for, yet the delegates still produced a finished text by September 17.
QWho actually ran the room while the Constitution was being written?
George Washington presided over the Philadelphia Convention, but the drafting itself leaned on a smaller circle of working delegates who shaped the language and argued the hardest points. James Madison, James Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris did much of the intellectual heavy lifting, while Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton lent the proceedings their reputations, and George Mason pushed positions that put him at odds with the final document. Franklin, in his eighties, was reportedly carried to sessions. Washington's chief function was chairing debate and lending his presence the weight of unquestioned authority, not authoring clauses himself.
QHow many delegates actually put their names on the Constitution the day it was approved?
On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates signed the finished Constitution in Philadelphia, a number smaller than the roughly fifty-five who had attended sessions over the summer. Some delegates, including George Mason, had left or refused to sign because they objected to specific provisions. The secrecy rule that governed the entire convention meant none of this internal disagreement reached the public until the document itself was released, so Americans read a Constitution with thirty-nine names attached without knowing which absent delegates had walked away and why.
