George Mason of Virginia also refused to sign. He had several reasons, but his first objection was that the document did not guarantee enough liberties. "There is no declaration of any kind, for preserving the liberty of the press, or the trial by jury in civil causes; nor against the danger of standing armies in time of peace." Mason wanted to add a “Declaration of Rights.”
Randolph, Gerry and Mason were the only delegates present in Philadelphia who did not sign the Constitution.
Four other delegates who opposed it went home before the signing. So did nine delegates who supported the Constitution but went home early.
Few of the delegates in Philadelphia could feel sure that enough states would approve the Constitution to make it the law of the land. As several of them said later, they wrote it the best they could.
Without it, the young nation would break apart before it even had a chance to succeed.
If future generations did not like the Constitution, it offered ways for them to change it. Here is George Washington played by an actor.
“I’m a practical man. I hope for the best, but I plan for the worst. And that’s what this document does.”
A record of the convention said that as the last delegates were signing the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin looked toward the president's chair. There was a sun painted on the back on the chair, at the top. Franklin observed to a few members near him that painters had found it difficult to make a rising sun look different from a setting sun. Franklin said he had looked often at the sun on the chair during the convention "without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length,” he said, “I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising, and not a setting sun."
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