US Founding Documents — who's who

Virginia planter and lawyer, thirty-three years old in June 1776. Assigned the drafting by the Committee of Five — Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, Livingston — because of his reputation as the most polished writer among them. Produced the draft in about seventeen days. The Congress revised it heavily on the floor, including removing his passage condemning the slave trade. Died July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration's adoption.

Massachusetts lawyer and political leader, member of the Continental Congress, and the most persistent advocate for independence in the debates of 1776. Assigned to the Committee of Five; revised Jefferson's draft and defended it on the floor of Congress. Later second President of the United States. Died, like Jefferson, on July 4, 1826.

The oldest member of the Committee of Five at seventy years old in 1776. Scientist, printer, diplomat, and the most internationally famous American of the founding generation. Made light revisions to Jefferson's draft — famously changing "sacred and undeniable" truths to "self-evident" truths in the second paragraph. Also delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 at age eighty-one, the oldest delegate present.

Unanimously elected presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention in May 1787. Said almost nothing during the four months of debate but was the silent guarantor of the entire enterprise. The framers gave the proposed presidency the powers they did because they assumed Washington would be the first occupant. Elected unanimously to the office twice.

The most influential single figure at the Constitutional Convention — drafter of the Virginia Plan, keeper of the detailed notes that are the historian's chief source for what was said behind closed doors, and principal author of Federalist 10, 39, and 47–51. Drafted the Bill of Rights in the first session of Congress in 1789 to honour the commitment made to the Anti-Federalists during ratification.

New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention; wrote fifty-one of the eighty-five Federalist Papers defending the proposed Constitution during the ratification fight. His Federalist 78 articulated the doctrine of judicial review that became Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Argued in Federalist 84 that no bill of rights was necessary — an argument he lost.

Virginia delegate who refused to sign the finished Constitution because of the absence of a bill of rights and the document's compromises with slavery. His Objections to This Constitution of Government (1787) was the most widely read Anti-Federalist pamphlet of the period. The Bill of Rights is, in substance, the political settlement of his quarrel with the Federalists.