DATE: 1787.
WHAT IT IS: The chair on which presiding officer George Washington sat during the Constitutional Convention, whose fame was further enlarged by a propitious remark made about it by one of the convention’s most esteemed delegates.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: It is a mahogany Philadelphia Chippendale armchair with a high back and partially covered armrests that measures 60³/₁₆ inches from top to bottom, 29¹¹/₁₆ inches at its greatest width, and 22¹⁵/₁₆ inches at its greatest depth. Its seat is covered in red morocco leather (which traditionally was dried goatskin). The chair’s open-worked splat is composed of vertical and horizontal rails on which are engraved designs of wheat and cornucopiae. At the top of the splat is a horizontal crest rail whose center area forms an artistic elevated shape. In the center of this shape is a gold-painted carving of a half sun with carved facial features of eyes, eyebrows, and a nose that is surrounded by a semicircular pattern of carved lines denoting sun rays. Standing on the center ray is a carved pole on which rests a Liberty cap that resembles an umbrella.
It was merely an artistic carving on a mundane object, but the ups and downs of the political convention in which the object played a role seemed to be reflected in the ambiguous design, as observed by one of the convention’s most prominent participants. In its metaphorical essence, ultimately the design—like the convention itself—auspiciously reflected the destiny of a nation.
The year was 1787 and the place was Philadelphia, where fifty-five delegates from the thirteen sovereign states had come to decide the political future of the United States of America. With so many different political interests present, the convention—whose ostensible goal was to revise the nation’s legal framework—promised healthy debate, if not downright discord. Yet the stakes for this loose confederation of thirteen states separated by internal political turmoil were high: their future as a united country.
Since their settlement, the thirteen British colonies along the Eastern seaboard of America had functioned under the strong arm of their mother country. Their individual governments were monitored by the British monarch’s royal governors, and English soldiers in the colonies enforced the onerous burdens imposed upon them by the mother country, including the restrictions on trading with any other country save England, the forced importation of English goods, taxes on sugar and tea, and much more. Despite the colonies’ many common obstacles and hardships—the wilderness, unfriendly Indians, the threatening presence of imperialistic Spain with its territories to the south and west—they still maintained separate political structures. It was only after they united and formed the First Continental Congress in 1774, and had their subsequent pleas for partial autonomy rudely ignored, that they banded together to once and for all rid themselves of the oppressive British monarchy.
On November 15, 1777, sixteen months after representatives of the thirteen American colonies formalized their intention to be free and independent states and dissolve all political connection to Great Britain with the Declaration of Independence (National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.), they drew up a set of articles that unified them under one central government. It wasn’t until 1781, after the Americans (with the help of a French army) defeated the British at Yorktown, Virginia, and claimed victory in the war, that all the states approved the articles, but even then the states continued to look upon themselves as separate nations in their own right.
For eight years, until 1789, the Congress governed the new country under the Articles of Confederation (National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.), but as James Madison declared, the articles were “nothing more than a treaty of amity and alliance between independent and sovereign states.” Indeed, under the weak Articles of Confederation, the Congress did not have the authority to levy taxes, regulate interstate and foreign commerce, establish a uniform currency, or gather an army; in effect, with the requirement to have votes of nine of the thirteen states, the Congress could hardly enact laws. The states acted as individual sovereign entities, issuing their own currency (which was not honored reciprocally), and many even maintained their own navies.
Several leading statesmen decided the situation had to be remedied. After the Virginia state legislature passed a resolution calling for the states to appoint commissioners to consider a uniform system of commerce throughout the country, the governor of Virginia requested a session to discuss the trade measure. On September 11, 1786, twelve delegates from five states convened at the so-called Annapolis Convention in Maryland. A committee was formed to draft a report, which was adopted. But the delegates determined not to proceed with it because the representation at the convention was insubstantial (more delegates were on their way but didn’t make it by the time the session ended on September 14). Some of the delegates took up the subject of the need to revise the Articles of Confederation, calling for state delegates to convene at a session “to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” The report, containing the announcement that the session would commence in Philadelphia “on the second Monday in May next,” was distributed to the states. The following February, Congress affirmed that on the scheduled date delegates would meet “for the sole purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.”
On May 14, 1787, the appointed state delegates began converging on Philadelphia for the convention. Seventy-four delegates were supposed to attend, but only fifty-five showed up, and they wouldn’t all arrive until July. Furthermore, delegates attended from only twelve states—Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania; Rhode Island declined on the grounds that the real intention of the convention was to empower the central government by diminishing the powers of the state governments. But the gravity of the convention was apparent, and the participants comprised many colonial luminaries, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Charles Pinckney, Roger Sherman, James Madison, and James Wilson.
From May 25 to September 17, 1787, the delegates gathered (though never all together at once) in the Assembly Room at the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall), a two-story redbrick building with a tower and a basement, to decide their country’s future. And it was in the first-floor Assembly Room where the delegates met that one of the chairs in the room was immortalized.
A full view of the "Rising Sun Chair."
A close-up view of the "rising sun" crest that inspired Benjamin Franklin to make his famous remark that immortalized the chair.
As often is the case, it was the random intersection of time, location, and past and current events that caused this mundane object to be transformed into a relic for the ages. As a general rule, an ordinary object may become renowned through its association either with a celebrated person or a famous event of history. William Penn’s seventeenth-century secretary (The Library Company, Philadelphia), for example, would undoubtedly have been consigned to a New World rubbish heap had it not been associated with the English founder of Pennsylvania. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.) providing for territorial legislatures for settlers west of the Ohio River was preserved because of its historic importance. But what is particularly fascinating about this eighteenth-century Assembly Room speaker’s chair is that it was used in a seminal event of American history and is intimately associated with not one but two legendary figures of the time.
During the British occupation of Philadelphia in the winter of 1777-78, the Redcoats had used the Pennsylvania State House on Chestnut Street to house American prisoners of war. It was during this time that the original speaker’s chair disappeared; presumably it was broken into pieces with all other loose wood in the building to be used as firewood to warm the British soldiers on the first floor (the American prisoners were lodged on the second floor). After the war, Philadelphia cabinetmaker John Folwell was selected to build a new speaker’s chair, and he made it in 1779 in the Chippendale style.
At the top of his ornate chair, Folwell carved a half-sun design. He was a member of the St. John’s Masonic Lodge, and it is possible that his association with this organization had some influence on his design of the chair. Folwell knew he was making the Assembly’s speaker’s chair and perhaps tried to reflect the power of the speaker in his design, since Masonic tradition equates a rising sun with the supreme authority of the lodge’s grand master. As for the carved wheat and other designs on the open-worked splat, these may be associated with Masonic ceremonies held to consecrate lodge halls, and may also refer to Pennsylvania’s agricultural bounty as it is represented on the state seal.
Folwell was commissioned to make the speaker’s chair while the Pennsylvania State House was being refurbished in 1779, and the funds to finance it came from the sale of confiscated property. During the British occupation of Philadelphia in the Revolutionary War, some local residents were loyal to the English king. When the British left Philadelphia, some of these people, who did not support the American war effort, were afraid to remain in the city for fear of being punished, perhaps even hanged. They took what belongings they could and fled (many went to England or Nova Scotia), often leaving behind their homes and assorted property. Members of the Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania knew who the Crown Loyalists were and confiscated the estates of these fugitives. This seized property was sold off, and its revenues were used to refurbish the State House.
On December 7, Pennsylvania state treasurer David Rittenhouse remitted two hundred pounds to Folwell to pay for the chair, which probably took a few months to make. It was initially placed on the State House’s second floor during the repairs occasioned by the British occupation, but it is unclear where the chair was located in the State House for the next six years. However, by 1787 it was in the Assembly Room on the first floor. It was in this very same room that representatives of the colonies had met to begin signing the newly engrossed Articles of Confederation in 1778 and to debate and sign the Declaration of Independence before that in 1776.
Now, eleven years later, this chair would find itself in the same room for another monumental event of American history: the creation of the United States Constitution. And during the convention the chair would be occupied by the greatest American hero of the day.
He was retired and reluctant to attend the convention, but George Washington came as a delegate of Virginia and was unanimously appointed president of the Constitutional Convention. As president, or presiding officer, Washington, the former commander in chief of the Continental Army, sat in Folwell’s speaker’s chair, which was set on a platform above the others in the room.
The various delegates had their preconceived agendas. Debate began as Virginia governor Edmund Randolph introduced a series of fifteen resolutions calling for a strong national government comprised of executive, judicial, and legislative branches; these resolutions were collectively known as the Virginia Plan (four copies are known to survive, including three at the Library of Congress, although Randolph’s original handwritten plan is not extant). The New Jersey delegates opposed the states’ loss of powers under a strong central government and supported a revision of the Articles of Confederation that merely gave more powers to Congress (six handwritten texts related to the New Jersey Plan are known to exist; these are associated with James Madison, David Brearly, George Washington, Luther Martin, and two documents in the hand of William Paterson). Still other delegates offered other plans for government, some even supporting the idea of a government headed by a king. A proposal for a plan of government based on the British form was presented in the Hamilton Plan (four to six variously annotated copies are known to exist*). There was also the Pinckney Plan** presented by South Carolina delegate Charles Pinckney, which Pinckney proffered years later as the model for the last draft of the Constitution.
In this illustration of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, presiding officer George Washington is seated on the platform on what became known as the Rising Sun Chair.
Many issues were debated during the Constitutional Convention, including state representation in the legislative branch and the counting of slaves for purposes of taxation. There was tremendous discord among the delegates, and at times it appeared that the session would fall apart. Pennsylvania delegate Gouverneur Morris later recalled, “The fate of America was suspended by a hair.” Were it not for the presence of the man who had led the Americans to victory over the British in the Revolutionary War, George Washington, with his venerable reputation and authority, the convention might never have reached a successful conclusion.
But the issues were eventually worked out in favor of a central government with numerous powers, and a five-man Committee of Detail was formed to create a draft for a constitution on July 26. A first draft (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia) in James Wilson’s hand was submitted on August 6, but renewed attention was focused on several specific issues. Slavery, trade regulation, and the method of electing the president were among the matters occupying the delegates’ attention.
A third copy of the committee’s report was made at the convention on August 6 (sixteen copies are known to survive at institutions such as the Library of Congress, The Library Company, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, National Archives, and The Pierpont Morgan Library). After more revisions were made by the Committee of Style and Arrangement a revised document was presented in convention on September 12 (this document does not survive); the committee’s plan was ordered to be printed and furnished to the delegates (of the approximately sixty copies printed, fifteen are known to survive).
The delegates were eventually able to settle on suitable compromises, and in September revised and voted on different articles of the Constitution. On September 15 the final vote came, and the delegates approved the document establishing the central government’s powers. It delineated the composition of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States; provided for Congress to have the power to collect taxes, borrow money on the credit of the nation, regulate trade between the states and with foreign countries, coin money, establish post offices, declare war, raise armies and a navy, and make laws necessary for carrying out the powers vested by the Constitution in the United States government; and described the executive powers of the president. An engrossed (official and stylized) copy of the new Constitution was ordered.
Two days later, on September 17, thirty-nine delegates, a majority of those who attended the convention, signed the new engrossed United States Constitution (National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.). It would prove to be one of the outstanding manifestos of government in history, and it began with the immortal preamble:
We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
But the making of the Constitution was painful for those who attended the sessions, which were closed to the public. Indeed, it was a heated and shaky convention, filled with obstacles, philosophical dissension, and political minefields. Benjamin Franklin, at eighty-one the elder statesman of America, took notice of the half-sun design on Washington’s speaker’s chair. Throughout the convention, with all its ups and downs, Franklin was intrigued by the meaning of this half sun; indeed its symbolism was too great to escape notice by the witty author of the Poor Richard’s Almanacs.
We bear a debt of gratitude to the venerable James Madison, who took copious notes on the proceedings (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), for recording for posterity Franklin’s remark immortalizing Washington’s chair. Here’s Madison on the momentous conclusion of the convention:
Whilst the last members were signing [the Constitution] Doctor Franklin looking towards the President’s Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising sun from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.
The metaphor in the carved design was now clearly manifest. The outcome of the contentious proceedings could have gone either way; the convention could well have dissolved into chaos, aborting the birth of the fledgling nation. But with the signing of the covenant binding the states together as an entity under one central government, Franklin had his answer:
But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.
Franklin’s prognosis was of course right on target, though the bright denouement he suggested would take some time to actualize. Before the Constitution could become “the law of the land,” it was necessary, as the delegates provided, for nine states to ratify it. After the Constitution was signed, anti-Federalists vociferously expressed their opposition to the document’s provision for a powerful central government—one that could potentially be dominated by wealthy people—in newspaper essays, with demonstrations, and through other means. From December 7, 1787, through January 9, 1788, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut ratified the Constitution, but the other states were undecided. However, one by one the rest of the states began to ratify; and finally, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify on June 21, 1788, the Constitution could be put into operation, and at last the states could be formed into a true union.
It was a hot and grueling few months, that summer of 1787 in Philadelphia when fifty-five state delegates gathered to plot out a legal map, a political course for the citizens of the United States. Midwives to a nation that would over time rise to become a global superpower, the delegates held destiny in their hands as they struggled to hammer out its legal foundation.
And with his propitious remark, Benjamin Franklin not only captured the spirit of the historic proceedings, and prophesied a young nation’s ascendance, but immortalized a chair as well—the only piece of furniture known to have survived the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
LOCATION: Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
*Some historians disagree as to the number of extant Hamilton Plans.
**The original Pinckney Plan was lost, but at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, there is an outline written by James Wilson that contains summaries of the original plan.