Excerpt from The Summer of 1787 by David O. Stewart, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Still, the delegates gathering in Philadelphia were humans, with all the strengths and fallibility of the breed. George Mason, for one, was far from starry-eyed over the men who wrote the Constitution. After the Convention adjourned, the Virginian's view of his colleagues was distinctly astringent:

You may have been taught [said Mason] to respect the characters of the members of the late Convention. You may have supposed that they were an assemblage of great men. There is nothing less true. From the Eastern states [New England] there were knaves and fools and from the states southward of Virginia they were a parcel of coxcombs and from the middle states office hunters not a few.

Whether demigods or coxcombs, or something in between, the nation's future rested squarely on their shoulders.

Copyright © 2007 by David O. Stewart