A constitutional miracle

In 1787, September 17th "dawned clear and cold" in the City of Brotherly Love, wrote Catherine Drinker Bowen in her book Miracle at Philadelphia. For the gathering delegates, "an assembly of demi-gods," as Thomas Jefferson called them, it was the last day of the still secret Constitutional Convention. The brisk autumn weather stood in stark relief to the sultry days at the onset of the proceedings in May. The history about to be made was not lost on 36-year-old James Madison. With national bankruptcy threatening, the Thirteen Colonies teetered on dissolution. To Madison, "a crisis had arrived which was to decide whether the American experiment was to be a blessing to the world, or to blast forever the hopes which the republican cause had inspired.”

By September 17, however, a constitutional consensus, over which George Washington himself presided, was finally at hand. As the "morning sun streamed through the high south windows" of the State House on that day, forty delegates turned their attention to 81-year-old Ben Franklin as he rose to speak:

"Mr. President, I confess 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: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. ... In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such."

Hours after the speech, "The members then proceeded to sign the instrument," Madison recorded. As they did so, Franklin pointed to the rising-sun painting adorning the back of the President's Chair. "Painters," he said to nearby colleagues, "had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have often, and often in the course of the Session, and the vicisitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, 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."

When the news broke about this novel, unasked-for, "three-headed" Constitution, the nation was, to put it mildly, "shocked," wrote Bowen. Congress referred the proposed document to the states on Sept. 28, this day, 224 years ago. Ratification proved to be arduous, bitter, and close. It nearly didn't happen at all. But old Dr. Franklin was right. Somehow out of this rabid contentiousness, America's sun did rise. And despite our never-ending troubles, it still is. Perhaps that is the true miracle.