'The Great Compromise' - Drafting the American Constitution, 1787
Jack N. Rakove tells how 'the miracle at Philadelphia' 200 years ago was an amalgam of high principles and backroom wheeler-dealing, to provide safeguards for the smaller states.
Is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.Whether one locates this miracle in the character of the delegates who gathered at Philadelphia in late May 1787, or in the compromises they struck before the Convention adjourned on September 17th, or in the simple durability of the Constitution, ultimately matters little.
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