On September 17, 1787, in a hot Philadelphia hall with all the windows shut so no one could eavesdrop, 39 men dipped quill pens into ink and signed a four-page document that would change the world. The temperature inside was sweltering, the delegates were sick of arguing, and a tall older man named Benjamin Franklin had to be helped to the table. But the United States Constitution was finally finished.
The delegates had spent the entire summer behind those locked doors arguing about how a brand-new country should govern itself. Should big states get more votes than small ones? Should there be a king, or a president, or a council? Should slavery be allowed? Each question sparked fierce debates. They invented compromise after compromise, including the idea of a Congress with two houses, where every state gets two senators no matter its size, but the House of Representatives is based on population. They split the government into three branches that check each other, an idea so clever that other countries copied it. After signing, Franklin pointed at a sun carved into the back of George Washington's chair and said he was now sure it was a rising, not a setting, sun.
The Constitution is now the oldest written constitution still in use anywhere in the world. It has only been formally changed 27 times in over 230 years, and the first 10 changes, the Bill of Rights, were added almost immediately to protect things like freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Every U.S. president, judge, and soldier takes an oath to defend the very document those overheated delegates signed on a September afternoon.
