Rising, Not Setting — Benjamin Franklin and the Last Day of the Constitutional Convention

September 17, 1787. On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, an eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin asked the room for something harder than agreement.

Sourced from the National Park Service's Independence National Historical Park, the National Archives, James Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention, and the Avalon Project's transcription of the September 17, 1787 convention debates.

Cover photograph: "Detail, crest rail of the Rising Sun Chair," National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park. Public domain.

Narration is AI-generated using a voice model trained on the author's own voice.