Constitution
Signatures
Bust out your magnifying glass. We're taking an up-close look at Signatures of the US Constitution.
| Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names, Attest: William Jackson, SECRETARY George Washington, PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY FROM VIRGINIA NEW HAMPSHIRE: John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman MASSACHUSETTS: Nathaniel Gorham, Rufus King CONNECTICUT: William Samuel Johnson, Roger Sherman NEW YORK: Alexander Hamilton NEW JERSEY: William Livingston, David Brearly, William Paterson, Jonathan Dayton PENNSYLVANIA: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Mifflin, Robert Morris, George Clymer, Thomas FitzSimons, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris DELAWARE: George Read, Gunning Bedford, Jr., John Dickinson, Richard Bassett, Jacob Broom MARYLAND: James McHenry, Daniel of Saint Thomas Jenifer, Daniel Carroll VIRGINIA: John Blair, James Madison, Jr. NORTH CAROLINA: William Blount, Richard Dobbs Spaight, Hugh Williamson SOUTH CAROLINA: John Rutledge, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Charles Pinckney, Pierce Butler GEORGIA: William Few, Abraham Baldwin |
Only 41 of the 55 men who participated in the Constitutional Convention actually signed the finished product; several left before negotiations were completed, and three major figures among the Founding Fathers—Edmund Randolph, George Mason, and Elbridge Gerry—objected to the Constitution's expansions of government power and refused to sign on principle. Still, at least one delegate signed from 12 of the 13 states; only Rhode Island, which boycotted the Constitutional Convention entirely, lacked a signatory.
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