Timeline of drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution Timeline of drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution The drafting of the Constitution of the United States began on May 25, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention met for the first time with a quorum at the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to revise the Articles of Confederation, and ended on September 17, 1787, the day the Constitution drafted by the convention's delegates to replace the Articles was adopted and signed. The ratification process for the Constitution began that day, and ended when the final state, Rhode Island, ratified it on May 29, 1790. In
Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 was James Madison's record of the daily debates held by delegates at the Philadelphia Convention, which resulted in the drafting of the current United States Constitution. Madison's journal describing what delegates said remains valuable to historians, as it is one of historians' few sources of information on the proceedings in Independence Hall during the summer of 1787 (which despite the summer heat, had its windows shut so that those outside could not hear what was being said; delegates were forbidden to leak