Submitted June 12, 2014

July 4th is a special day, indeed!

While many, including myself, feel our government is in peril today as it no longer chooses to heed the lessons of the Founders, I am in the process of collecting the scanned pages of the Sol Bloom Public Domain book called The Story of the Constitution, written by Bloom for the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission (1937) celebration (150 yrs.). I am impressed even more after reading Bloom, by the Founders of our nation and the Framers of our Constitution, who assured that we have freedoms that are inviolate because they wrote the finest Constitution of all time.

Bloom asks the question: "Who were the fifty-five men who, in varying degrees, were the Framers of our National Constitution?"  He then goes on to answer and since the answer does not go on forever, and since Pennsylvania's favorite Ben Franklin is noted as a sage in his response, and his 1937 book is in the public domain, I provide his answer. Is it not a great idea for all Americans to know that our country was not founded by dummies or gullible low information people. The Founders were brave and they were also the cream of the crop intellectually (known as the elite when it was a positive term). We owe our freedom to them. Let's remember this as we celebrate the 4th of July this year and every year hence!

Here it is from the late Sol Bloom, the Director of the 150th celebration in 1937 and an American hero in his own right:

"The knowledge concerning some of them is indefinite, but the following facts are substantially correct. All of them except eight were natives of the colonies. Franklin, the oldest, was 81; Dayton the youngest, was 26; fourteen were 50 or over; twenty-one were less than 40. Twenty-five were college men. Eighteen had been officers in the Continental army, of whom ten were in the Society of the Cincinnati. One had been a British army officer before the Revolution. Thirty-four of them were lawyers, or men who had at least studied the law, some of them trained at the Middle Temple in London; of these six had been or were to be State attorney generals, five chief justices of the State Supreme Courts, four chancellors, three national judges, and five justices of the Supreme �Court of the United States, of whom one was to be chief justice and another after a term as associate justice was to be rejected for the higher office by the Senate. Eight of the deputies were merchants or financiers. Six of them were planters, while others were planters in addition to legal or other activities. There were three physicians and two former ministers of the gospel, several college professors and one present and one future college president. The Fourth Estate was represented by Benjamin Franklin.

These men were almost without exception acquainted with public affairs: forty-six had been members of one or both of the houses of the colonial or State legislatures; ten attended State constitutional conventions; sixteen had been or were to  be governors. In national affairs forty-two were delegates to the Continental Congress, eight were signers of the Declaration of Independence, six signers of the draft of the Articles of Confederation, seven had attended the Annapolis Convention, and three had been executive officers under the Congress. Fourteen were to be congressmen and nineteen national senators, one territorial governor, four members of the President�s Cabinet. One had been a minister  abroad and six more were to be later. Two future Presidents of the United States took a prominent part in the proceedings of the Convention and one future Vice-President. Two others were to be candidates for the highest office in the land and these and one other, candidates for the Vice-Presidency. The positions which these men had occupied or were later to fill are indicative of the regard in which they were held by their fellow citizens, and of their character and worth.

The most important man in the convention was George Washington; indeed, his acceptance of the deputyship, made reluctantly and after long consideration, was the initial triumph of the movement, and a foreshadowing of success, so great was his prestige. Madison and Randolph, his fellow deputies from Virginia, were very active in the work of the convention; and Wythe and Mason, older men, added the weight of their knowledge and experience as prominent participants in earlier affairs. Madison�s great knowledge of political science, the fact that to him more than to any other deputy public life was a profession, and his grasp of the essential problems before the convention and the means by which they could be solved, enabled him to become the principal architect of the Constitution.

Franklin was the seer of the convention. His great age and infirmities forbade very active participation, and he was probably responsible for little of the detailed results, but his very presence gave the gathering importance and dignity and his advice must have been eagerly sought and carefully considered. He and Washington were the two great harmonizers. Washington presided over the formal sessions, taking little part in the debate, but in committee of the whole, and in the private conferences which were such an important underpinning of the formal structure as it arose, he was in constant consultation with his colleagues..."

This is a fine country because of such fine patriots. I love America! I bet you do too!   Celebrate America every day and especially every Fourth of July, when the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence. Remember that for the Founders, it was not such an easy task to be patriotic as Ben Frankin once said: " We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." That is how important America was to the Founding Patriots.