Who were these solons rhapsodized by Benjamin Franklin as "the most august and respectable assembly he was ever in in his life"?44 The fifty-five delegates representing twelve states-the renegade Rhode Island boycotted the convention-scarcely constituted a cross section of America. They were white, educated males and mostly affluent property owners. A majority were lawyers and hence sensitive to precedent. Princeton graduates {nine} trumped Yale {four} and Harvard {three} by a goodly margin. They averaged forty-two years of age, meaning that Hamilton, thirty-two, and Madison, thirty-six, were relatively young. As a foreign-born delegate, Hamilton wasn't alone,
( Ron Chernow )
[ Alexander Hamilton ]
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