The Summer of 1787

The Men Who Invented the Constitution

David O. Stewart

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2007
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781416554042
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

The Summer of 1787 takes us into the sweltering room in which the founding fathers struggled for four months to produce the Constitution: the flawed but enduring document that would define the nation—then and now. George Washington presided, James Madison kept the notes, Benjamin Franklin offered wisdom and humor at crucial times. The Summer of 1787 traces the struggles within the Philadelphia Convention as the delegates hammered out the charter for the world's first constitutional democracy. Relying on the words of the delegates themselves to explore the Convention's sharp conflicts and hard bargaining, David O. Stewart lays out the passions and contradictions of the, often, painful process of writing the Constitution. It was a desperate balancing act. Revolutionary principles required that the people have power, but could the people be trusted? Would a stronger central government leave room for the states? Would the small states accept a Congress in which seats were allotted according to population rather than to each sovereign state? And what of slavery? The supercharged debates over America's original sin led to the most creative and most disappointing political deals of the Convention. The room was crowded with colorful and passionate characters, some known—Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Edmund Randolph—and others largely forgotten. At different points during that sultry summer, more than half of the delegates threatened to walk out, and some actually did, but Washington's quiet leadership and the delegates' inspired compromises held the Convention together. In a country continually arguing over the document's original intent, it is fascinating to watch these powerful characters struggle toward consensus—often reluctantly—to write a flawed but living and breathing document that could evolve with the nation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• The Delegates
• The United States in 1787
• Chapter One: It Started at Mount Vernon: March 1785
• Chapter Two: Blood on the Snow: Winter 1787
• Chapter Three: “A House on Fire”: Spring 1787
• Chapter Four: Demigods and Coxcombs Assemble: May 1787
• Chapter Five: Virginia Leads: May 25–June 1
• Chapter Six: Wilson’s Bargain: May 31–June 10
• Chapter Seven: Three-Fifths of a Human Being: June 11
• Chapter Eight: Festina Lente: June 12–19
• Chapter Nine: To the Brink: June 21–July 10
• Chapter Ten: The Small States Win: July 11–17
• Chapter Eleven: The Touch of a Feather: July 9–14
• Chapter Twelve: The Ipswich Miracle: July 13
• Chapter Thirteen: The Presidential Muddle: July 17–26
• Chapter Fourteen: Rutledge Hijacks the Constitution: July 27–August 6
• Chapter Fifteen: Back to Work: August 6
• Chapter Sixteen: The Curse of Heaven: August 8–29
• Chapter Seventeen: David Brearley’s Presidency: August 24–September 7
• Chapter Eighteen: The Loyal Opposition: August 31
• Chapter Nineteen: With All Its Faults: September 8–17
• Chapter Twenty: Happiness, Perpetual and Otherwise:July 4, 1788
• Chapter Twenty-One: Making Amends
• Appendix 1: The Elector System
• Appendix 2: The Constitution of 1787
• Further Reading
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Illustration Credits
• Copyright