All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches

Benjamin Franklin: Founding Compromise

“When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?”

1787

Benjamin Franklin’s closing argument in support of the Constitution was an origin story for our union and the debates we’ve been having ever since. For weeks, he had attended the Constitutional Convention despite bouts of gout and kidney stones, which made it difficult for him to stand. Given his condition, he was carried aloft to the proceedings in a sedan chair. Finally, on the morning of September 17, 1787, he left his house for one final assembly of the delegates, having drafted an extraordinary speech about compromise.

Franklin was eighty-one years old and the most famous American in the world. He understood the stakes involved in crafting the new Constitution, sharing his concerns in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. “If it does not do good it must do harm,” he wrote of the Convention, “as it will show that we have not wisdom enough to govern ourselves and will strengthen the opinion of some political writers that popular governments cannot long support themselves.”

The United States was free, but vulnerable. With some forty thousand residents, Philadelphia was the largest American city; by comparison, London was an imperial capital of more than seven hundred thousand. The British had yet to vacate forts in the Northwest. The Spanish were entrenched to the Southwest. Native Americans pursued shifting alliances to preserve their shrinking lands. Meanwhile, under the Articles of Confederation, the states retained most powers. A weak central government was starved of funds, lacked the power to govern, and confronted populist uprisings of Revolutionary War veterans. As the delegates met in Philadelphia, the interests of the states appeared irreconcilable on issues as fundamental as the formula for representation, the nature of a chief executive, and the future of human slavery.

The Convention took place against this ominous backdrop with Franklin serving as a kind of host in his home city. Abroad, he had secured the French support that allowed the United States to become independent through the Revolution. In Philadelphia, he had left his mark on all public institutions. When George Washington reached the city, he visited Franklin’s house on Market Street. While Franklin could have made a legitimate claim to the presidency of the Convention, he chose to nominate Washington. This set a tone of conciliation, which was very much Franklin’s intention. “The nomination came with particular grace from Pennsylvania,” James Madison wrote, “as Doctor Franklin alone could have been thought of as a competitor.”

Throughout the Convention, Franklin’s home was an informal place for the delegates to converse about matters large and small—under the shade of the mulberry tree in his yard, at his enormous dinner table, or in the parlor, where he kept artifacts from his life in business, science, and politics. The delegates debated, compromised, and drafted.5 But as the Convention reached its final days, there were lingering concerns. What if the states couldn’t achieve unanimity? Would the delegates advocate for the Constitution in a spirit of unity, or air their differences publicly? Could ratification be defeated—as Franklin’s own 1754 proposal for a union had died when it was sent to the respective assemblies of the colonies?

Perhaps some of these questions passed through his aged and nimble mind as he gazed out from his sedan chair on that final morning of the Convention, this man who had met and conversed with the leading kings and philosophers of his age. At stake was nothing less than the fulfillment of what had become his life’s work: the belief that reason, virtue, and hard work could improve human circumstances, and that politics could give expression to that progress.

The session was held at the Pennsylvania State House, where Franklin had been a party to countless debates. It began with a reading of the final draft of the Constitution, a now-revered document that was then just a first draft of history. Franklin was called upon. Given his difficulty standing, he handed the speech to James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who stood and read it aloud to an assembly of delegates that included Washington, Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.6 Momentarily, they would be asked for their signatures. The speech that Franklin wrote was intended to supply the delegates with the fortitude to stand behind an imperfect outcome as the best possible outcome, drawing on lessons learned from his own extraordinary life.