53 pages • 1 hour read
Miracle At Philadelphia
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Key Figures
Catherine Drinker Bowen (The Author)
Catherine Drinker Bowen was an American writer who became best known for her popular biographies of historical subjects. Born in Pennsylvania in 1897, she showed early promise as a violinist, and attended the prestigious Julliard School in New York City, but ceased her studies upon her marriage to Ezra Bowen, an economics professor at Lafayette University. Relegated to the home and tasked with caring for their two children (a boy and girl named after their father and mother), she began writing, keeping it a secret for many years even as she had published a daily column, several magazine articles, and two books. In 1932, she wrote a novel, Rufus Starbuck’s Wife, about a woman struggling to make a career in writing while living under the shadow of her husband. This was likely semi-autobiographical, as she divorced Bowen in 1936 and began to pursue writing full-time, publishing a well-regarded biography of the Russian composer Tchaikovsky in 1937. When the outbreak of the Second World War prevented any further research in Europe, she turned to American subjects, first the Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Founding Father John Adams. In 1957, she published what is widely considered her best book, The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Coke, 1522-1634, about an important jurist in the age of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. The book received many honors including the National Book Award for nonfiction. Miracle at Philadelphia, published in 1966, remains one of the best-regarded popular accounts of the Constitutional Convention. She died of cancer in 1973, leaving behind an unfinished biography of Benjamin Franklin.
James Madison
Lauded as the “Father of the Constitution,” Madison played a larger role than any other individual in both drafting and ratifying the US Constitution. Born to a wealthy Virginia family that enslaved hundreds of people, Madison received a classical education in Latin and ancient Greek. He also studied the history and politics of that era, through which he became interested in the question of how to sustain republican government: Ancient Greece and Rome were replete with them, but they all seemed to collapse due to class conflict or the lure of foreign conquest. At Princeton University, he combined his interest in classical politics with Enlightenment concepts of individual rights and the possibilities of social progress. During the Revolutionary War, Madison played a key role in the Virginia legislature, where he experienced firsthand the extraordinary difficulties in coordinating efforts among the 13 states to supply, fund, and equip the Continental Army. This experience helped inspire Madison, along with George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, to sponsor a new Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the spring of 1787.
At the Convention, Madison took the most comprehensive notes of the debates by far, and played a key role in many of the Constitution’s innovations, including the first ten amendments collectively known as the “Bill of Rights.” Along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, he wrote The Federalist Papers to convince voters in New York to adopt the Constitution, with some of his essays (especially numbers 10 and 51) now serving as foundational texts for American political philosophy. Under the Constitutional system, Madison became a crucial ally to Thomas Jefferson, and served as his secretary of state for the whole of his presidency (1801-1809). He then succeeded Jefferson as president. Despite a tumultuous time in office marked by the costly War of 1812 against Britain, Madison helped to secure the generation-long dominance of the Democratic-Republicans, helping to bury the Federalist Party despite having championed the original Federalist cause. He was married to Dolly Payne, famous for her skills as a hostess and for rescuing priceless works from the White House when the British army burned it down in 1814.
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton rose from unlikely origins to become one of the most influential figures in the founding of the United States. Born on the island of Nevis, he grew up mostly on the island of St. Croix. He had a tumultuous childhood, with his father leaving and his mother dying by the time he was 13. He impressed others with his intellect from a young age, and his community sponsored him to study in the United States. While a student at King’s College in New York (now Columbia University), he fell in with the growing resistance to British rule in the colonies. Upon the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, he became an aide-to-camp to George Washington, and eventually commanded a battalion at the decisive Battle of Yorktown. After the war, Hamilton was an early champion of a stronger central government, and while he helped bring about the Constitutional Convention, the skepticism of New York governor George Clinton compelled Hamilton, who was a New York delegate, to play a relatively small role in its deliberations, leaving for long stretches of time before returning to sign the document. He did, however, play a key role in convincing his home state to ratify the Constitution, writing over half of the 85 Federalist Papers (along with James Madison and John Jay) to support its adoption in New York.
Upon the election of George Washington, Hamilton became the first secretary of the treasury, and is widely credited with establishing the financial and manufacturing foundations of the American republic, particularly by sponsoring the First Bank of the United States. He also played a major role in shaping America’s first party system as the de facto leader of the Federalists, putting him in frequent conflict with Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. A political dispute with Jefferson’s second vice president, Aaron Burr, resulted in a duel on July 11, 1804, during which Hamilton suffered a fatal wound. He had eight children with his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, who outlived him by a half century.
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