Word: philadelphia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some of the notables invited to the convention in that summer of 1787 simply refused to come. One, Virginia's Patrick Henry, said of the gathering in Philadelphia that he "smelt a rat." Others came and found the impassioned arguments profoundly dispiriting. "I almost despair of seeing a favorable issue to the proceedings of the convention," George Washington wrote to Alexander Hamilton, who had already gone back to New York City, "and do | therefore repent having had any agency in the business...
...previous day was a good omen, though. Without his prestigious presence, there was little hope for any new constitution. The retired commander of the Revolutionary Army originally was a little reluctant to come, but cheering crowds hailed him all along the route from his home at Mount Vernon. In Philadelphia, Washington soon went to call on his old friend Benjamin Franklin, now 81 and gout-ridden, who traveled around Philadelphia in the city's first sedan chair, a glass-windowed Parisian creation carried by four prisoners from the Walnut Street jail. Franklin, who knew Washington's tastes well...
Washington, Franklin, Madison -- when Thomas Jefferson, then serving as Minister to Paris, read the names of all those worthies reported gathering in Philadelphia, he called them "an assembly of demigods." They were something less than that, of course, but they were nonetheless an unusually admirable lot, experienced, educated, patriotic, dedicated. And though they displayed powerful individual differences in both philosophy and temperament, they showed important similarities too. Of the 55 delegates from twelve states (Rhode Island refused to participate), more than half were lawyers and eight were judges; another quarter were large landowners. All of them had held public office...
...typical of Madison that he had come to Philadelphia eleven days early, the first outsider there. As the opening was delayed, Madison met daily with the other Virginia delegates to work out what came to be known as the Virginia plan, a blueprint for the Constitution and thus the basic agenda for the convention. His ideas were fairly representative of liberal opinion in his time. He was deeply suspicious of executive authority, of anything that smacked of monarchism. He believed profoundly in the sovereignty of the people and in their civil rights. But he was worried that political groups tended...
...transatlantic traveler is to track down the cheapest possible airline ticket. Because of heavy competition between Pan Am, TWA, British Airways and other carriers, there is excess capacity on some routes. Nonstop flights now depart daily from more than a dozen U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Dallas. Next week Continental Airlines will take off over the Atlantic with its Newark-Paris service. The airline is opening with a three-month giveaway: for just $1 more than the basic $667 roundtrip coach fare, Continental will throw in five nights in a three-star Paris hotel, a saving...