We the People: THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION AFTER 200 YEARS : The Men Who Molded History : They played the crucial roles at the Constituional Convention.

“Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people; they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.

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THOMAS JEFFERSON

Letter to Joseph Priestly, July 19, 1802.

Fifty-five men attended the Federal Convention in Philadelphia. Thirty-eight of them were there on Sept. 17 to sign the final document. They ranged from wealthy plantation owners to small shopkeepers. Nearly two-thirds were lawyers, a ratio that has changed remarkably little in the legislatures since then.

Of necessity, government--its principles and structure--was much a part of their life. When he saw the names of those in attendance, Thomas Jefferson called it “an assembly of demigods.”

And some of the young nation’s brightest stars were not there. Jefferson was in Paris as America’s ambassador; John Adams was in London on a parallel mission. Virginia’s fiery patriot Patrick Henry refused to attend, saying he “smelt a rat.”

By most accounts, the men described here played the most crucial roles during the summer-long convention.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

Hamilton of New York was a strange, fascinating and ultimately disappointing figure at the convention. Brilliant but impetuous, Hamilton took to the floor to denounce the “excess of democracy” in America and express deep admiration for a British-style monarchy. The speech was a disaster for the 30-year-old Hamilton, one that haunted him throughout his life.

To that point in his career, Hamilton had risen like a flare. Born in the West Indies of a brutal father he never knew, he and his mother took up briefly with a protector named James Hamilton. His stepfather soon abandoned them, and his mother died a few years later, leaving the 12-year-old Alexander a penniless orphan. But the boy was so charming and bright that he attracted sponsors, one of whom sent him off to be educated at King College--later Columbia University--in New York. In 1774, he wrote several political tracts in behalf of the Revolution, and his exploits in the Army soon attracted another, even more influential sponsor--Gen. George Washington.

But Hamilton was so erratic, so belligerent at times, that he got the nickname “Little Mars.” He would die in 1804 after a duel with Aaron Burr.

Hamilton represented New York at the convention, but had no particular loyalty to the state. He wanted a strong national government, the stronger the better. “The British government was the best in the world,” he said at one point, which sounded to his colleagues too much like what they had revolted against.

Supported by no one, Hamilton left Philadelphia in late June, but returned in September to sign the final document. His most important contribution came the next year when he, along with Madison and John Jay, defended the Constitution in a series of newspaper essays which came to be known as the Federalist Papers. Today, Hamilton is regularly cited as an authoritative spokesman on the true meaning of the Constitution.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Franklin represented Pennsylvania, but he was a man of the world. A publisher, scientist, diplomat and “the greatest phylosopher of the present age,” according to one delegate, Franklin was then 81 years old and in declining health. He suffered from “gout and stones” and was pained by any jostling. So each day, the rotund “Dr. Franklin” was carried into the meeting hall in a sedan chair borne by four husky prisoners from the nearby Walnut Street jail.

Because of ill-health, Franklin participated little in the debates. On several occasions, he had a speech read for him, but they were rambling and ill-focused efforts.

Franklin’s main contributionwas to add a touch of wit and humor during the most heated debates. And on Sept. 17, as the delegates took their turn in signing the final document, Franklin pointed out to those near him the design of a sun carved into the back of the President’s chair. “I have often in the course of the session . . . looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting,” Madison reported him as saying. “But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Washington of Virginia was, as one biographer put it, “the indispensable man.” His attendance at the convention gave the gathering dignity and weight not only in the eyes of delegates but in the eyes of the people. The easiest decision the delegates made was to quickly elect Gen. Washington as the presiding officer.

Through the four months, he sat silently at the head of the room. Washington, 55, was known to favor a strong national government, but let others carry the debate.

A small but telling demonstration of his immense influence: After endless haggling during the summer, the delegates agreed on one representative for each 40,000 people. Then on Sept. 17, just when the delegates were about to sign the Constitution, he stepped down from the chair to observe that many delegates seemed troubled by the 40,000 figure and that he himself preferred 30,000. Without hesitation, the delegates voted unanimously to change the number to 30,000.

“One of the best horsemen in America, he was exhilarated by racing at top speed through fields and over fences,” report historians Christopher and James Lincoln Collier. “He liked to gamble, to play cards, to bet on horse races and cockfights, to dance. He loved nothing better than to sit over dinner with old friends and new acquaintances, drinking Madeira, cracking walnuts, telling stories and joking.”

Although he had little formal education, Washington patterned his public career after Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer who left his fields to lead the Roman army in defense of the republic, and having done his duty, resigned and returned home. At the end of the French and Indian War, Washington resigned from the Virginia military and returned to Mount Vernon. He did the same at the end of the Revolutionary War, resigning his commission with great fanfare. Among his most lasting contributions to the nation was his insistence on resigning at the end of his second term in the presidency and turning over the reigns of power to an elected successor--an example that the leaders of few revolutions have copied.

JAMES MADISON

Madison of Virginia was both a scholar whose ideas on democratic government formed the basis for the new Constitution and a politician whose persistence helped bring it into existence. And in particular, he won acceptance of the crucial idea that a republican form of government could survive and flourish serving a large geographic area.

A young aristocrat who was happier with his books than with horses, Madison read everything he could find on government, ancient and contemporary. He had concluded that the post-Revolutionary War government was hopelessly weak, and lobbied his friends, including Washington, and helped to arrange the convention in Philadelphia. He played a key role in preparing the “Virginia plan,” which outlined a new government with three branches: an executive, legislature and judiciary.

The small states forced him to compromise on his plan for basing legislative representation solely on population, but he achieved his greatest goal--creation of a central government with power over the states. Each day, when not engaged in the debate, Madison was in his seat taking notes on the proceedings, notes that would become the best record available on what transpired behind the closed doors of the Convention.

When the convention adjourned, he led the fight for ratification in Virginia, and contributed mightily to the Federalist Papers that aided the ratification, especially in New York. In the first session of the new Congress, he submitted a Bill of Rights, which became the first 10 Amendments.

GEORGE MASON

Mason of Virginia was a man ahead of his time. A slave owner, he wanted to see slavery abolished. An aristocratic planter, he fought for the rights of all citizens. One of the most active and influential delegates at the convention, in the end he voted against the new Constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights.

Mason, then 52, was also an odd duck--a crusty, arrogant loner, according to historians Christopher and James Lincoln Collier. “He shaved his head and doused it in cold water every morning, and at the convention, he was the lone delegate in favor of sumptuary laws designed to control people’s drink, dress and deportment,” they report. And he was none too happy spending his summer in cosmopolitan Philadelphia. “I begin to grow heartily tired of the etiquette and nonsense so fashionable in this city,” he wrote to his son.

But Mason was a fighter for the rights of the individual. He had authored a Virginia Bill of Rights in 1776 and, after the new federal Constitution had been ratified, his work was used as a model when the first Congress added the Bill of Rights in 1789.

His best known action at the convention, however, was his speech on Aug. 22, 1787, denouncing slavery. His plantation at Guston Hall was said to have 300 slaves, but Mason believed the slave trade--”this infernal traffic”--should be ended and slavery gradually abolished.

ROGER SHERMAN

Sherman of Connecticut is the only man who signed all the major documents of the founding years--the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. And his skill in fashioning compromise may well have saved the Constitution.

In June, the delegates had split into two factions that threatened to sunder the convention, with the large states favoring a legislature with representation based on population and the small states holding out for equal representation for each state. Sherman, along with John Dickenson of Delaware, came up with the solution: a lower house with proportional representation and an upper house where each state had an equal voice; it took weeks of haggling, but the “Great Compromise” formula for proportional representation eventually prevailed.

Tall, rawboned and plain-spoken, the 66-year-old Sherman was a legendary politician. He did not look or act the part--John Adams said his “air is the reverse of grace”--but he got to the point quickly.

He summed up his advice to a younger colleague entering politics: “When you are in the minority, talk; when you are in a majority, vote.”

JAMES WILSON

Wilson of Pennsylvania is regarded as, next to Madison, the most influential delegate. He fought for a Constitution that would form a nation, rather than a federation of states, and he insisted on equal treatment for new states that would later join the Union. But he died in disgrace a decade later and is largely forgotten today.

Wilson was born in Scotland in 1742, was educated at universities in Glasgow and Edinburgh and emigrated to America at age 24. He soon established himself as a Philadelphia lawyer. His second interest--unfortunately for him--was speculating in land on the frontier.

Tall and plump with tiny glasses perched on a florid nose, Wilson was not a magnetic figure or a flamboyant orator. “Rather he was dry, powerful and persistent,” says historian Catherine Drinker Bowen. “Yet the intellectual clarity of his views was itself dramatic.”

Many delegates--perhaps most--saw themselves as representatives for their states, but Wilson said: “We must remember the language with which we began the Revolution: ‘Virginia is no more, Massachusetts is no more, Pennsylvania is no more.’ We are now one nation of brethren.”

He took the same broadly national view when the delegates considered how to treat Western territories that might soon wish to join the Union. Some delegates wanted to govern these lands as “provinces,” where citizens would have no voice in Congress. Wilson said this would repeat Britain’s mistake with its American colonies and predicted the same result: “First enmity . . . then actual separation.” He won full voting rights for states-to-be.

After the convention, Wilson led the fight for ratification in Pennsylvania. He was “on his feet, tireless, astute” throughout the debates, Bowen reports.

But the convention and the successful ratification struggle marked the high point of Wilson’s life. President Washington appointed him to the Supreme Court, but his huge land investments went spectacularly sour. Although a sitting justice, he was forced to flee creditors from town to town, holing up in a series of “dreary taverns.” He died penniless in North Carolina at age 56 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

Morris of Pennsylvania, the peg-legged playboy of the convention, penned the most memorable phrases of the Constitution.

Wealthy and verbose, Morris was described by delegate Pierce of Georgia as “one of those geniuses in whom every species of talents combine to render him conspicuous and flourishing in public debate. He winds through all the mazes of rhetoric and throws around him such a glare that he charms, captivates, and leads away the sense of all who hear him.”

Rumors had it that he had lost his leg in a leap from a balcony to escape an angry husband. Morris said his leg was crushed in a carriage accident.

At the convention, Morris spoke more than anyone, arguing for a strong national government. “We had better take a supreme government now than a despot 20 years hence, for come he must,” he said.

But his greatest achievement came in early September when he was put in charge of writing the final document.

“We the People of the United States,” Morris wrote boldly. Some delegates thought they should address the states as sovereigns, but Morris wanted to speak directly to the people. “In Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”