DDH - All roads Lead to Philadelphia

One of the things that I have wanted to do for some time is a complete revision of the Convention Episodes of Constitution Thursday. This summer, except for the three weeks I will be gone, Dave Does History gives me the chance to do just that. For the next few months we will take a weekly look at the things that happened in the Philadelphia in the Summer of 1787. This will not be a word for word repeat of the original Convention episodes, but with a new audience it will give us a chance to once again consider the struggle that lead to our Constitution…

This week in 1787 is the designated time for delegate appointed by each State – except one – to arrive in Philadelphia to begin the process of revising the Articles of Confederation. In the previous year, at a conference in Annapolis, it was finally recognized that the government of the United States was just not functional in a meaningful way. This Philadelphia Conference was meant to try and fix some of the glaringly obvious issues that were causing more and more problems.

Of note, the weather in Philadelphia, and all up and down the mid-Atlantic seaboard, was a mess. The delegates had been scheduled to arrive beginning on May 13th, but few had actually managed to navigate the morass of mud and torrent filled rivers to get there.

But those who had arrived, almost entirely Virginians, were determined to make good use of the time while they awaited the rest of the Delegates…