What happened on September 17, 1787?

The four dates that matter

Franklin's last argument

The session opened with the engrossed parchment read aloud to the room. Then Benjamin Franklin, 81 and too weak to hold the floor himself, handed a written speech to James Wilson, who read it for him. It is the most quoted thing the Convention produced besides the Constitution itself:

Franklin's argument was not that the document was flawless. It was that every man in the room had doubts, that a unanimous front would give the proposal its only chance in the states, and that each delegate should, as he put it, "doubt a little of his own infallibility." He then moved that the members sign a formula Gouverneur Morris had drafted — "Done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present" — worded so a doubter could sign as witness to his state's assent rather than endorse every clause.

One last change — and Washington's only speech

Before the signing, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts moved one final amendment: shrink the minimum size of a House district from 40,000 people to 30,000, so the chamber would sit closer to the voters. At that, George Washington rose — for the first and only time all summer on a question of substance. He had presided in near-total silence since May; now he told the room the change would give "satisfaction" to the people and that he wished it adopted. It passed without a single objection, and the correction was scraped into the already-finished parchment.

Washington saved his one intervention for the last hour of the last day, and spent it on the least glamorous clause in the document — the arithmetic of representation. That is the founder the quiz calls the Reluctant Hero behaving exactly in character.

The signing and the rising sun

The delegations signed north to south, Washington first. Hamilton — the only New Yorker left — urged wavering colleagues on, by Madison's account admitting that "no man's ideas were more remote from the plan than his were known to be," and signing anyway. Gerry, Mason, and Randolph held out; the full list of who signed and who refused is its own story.

While the last members signed, Franklin looked at the sun carved on the back of Washington's chair and made the remark Madison chose to end his notes with: painters, Franklin said, had always found it hard to tell a rising sun from a setting one — "but now at length I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising and not a setting Sun." The Convention then dissolved itself, and Washington recorded in his diary that the members "adjourned to the City Tavern, dined together and took a cordial leave of each other."

The biggest September 17 myth

The most common mistake is saying the Constitution took effect that day. It did not. The signing produced a proposal — Congress forwarded it to the states on September 28, and the document had no legal force until New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify on June 21, 1788. The new government did not convene until March 4, 1789. September 17 was not the government's first day. It was the argument's first day: within six weeks the first Federalist essay was in the New York papers, and the men who wrote as Publius were defending clause by clause what the Convention had just signed.

Why the distinction matters

It matters because it shows what the founding looked like in real time: a secret drafting process, a compromise text nobody fully loved, a staged public argument, and only then a government. The Constitution was argued into force — through thirteen state ratification fights, against serious opponents whose objections eventually produced the Bill of Rights. If you understand what September 17 did and did not do, the rest of the story falls into order.

What to read next

Primary sources and further reading

• Madison's Notes, September 17, 1787 | Avalon Project — Franklin's speech, Gorham's motion, Washington's remarks, and the rising sun, as recorded in the room.
• A More Perfect Union | National Archives — the signing narrative and the road from proposal to ratification.
• The Constitution of the United States | National Archives — the document itself, with signing and ratification context.
• Madison's Notes, September 15, 1787 | Avalon Project — the unanimous state vote and the three declared refusals two days earlier.

Related pages on the signing and ratification