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Extract from Howard Chandler Christy’s, Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States
United States Constitutional Convention 1787
The Constitution of the United States of America was written in Philadelphia from May to September 1787. Led by George Washington, a group of delegates from most states convened to debate in secret a text that was then presented to the states of the Union for ratification.
It was, in the words of the Federalist Papers, a government created through ‘reflection and choice’. American states after the Revolution had pioneered the concept of a special constitutional convention to create a written constitutional text — a process that stands in stark contrast to the British tradition of an unwritten constitution, or the older classical tradition of allowing a single, wise law-giver to set up the system of government for a society. The resulting 1787 Constitutional Convention would set the standard for the process of modern constitution-writing, not only in America but for many modern nations.
The work of the Convention is preserved in the official journal as well as in a number of privately kept diaries. Using these records, the Quill Project reconstructs months of negotiation and debate across dozens of committees and subcommittees, allowing the precise context of each proposal, speech, and vote to be explored. Users are able to chart how particular language emerged over weeks and months, and to trace the influence of particular individuals and delegations. Throughout the platform we provide links to the manuscript images that survive, held by online archives such as the Library of Congress or ConSource, allowing users to see for themselves the materials that have allowed us to construct the digital model of the negotiations.
The 2019 version of the Quill model is a complete reworking of the pilot project that was first published in 2016. Compared to the 2016 edition, the 2019 version takes advantage of the very latest scholarship concerning the surviving manuscripts (both official and unofficial) related to the work of the Convention, and thanks to the technical improvements made to the underlying platform is able to represent the work of the convention in a more precise way.
“It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice”