1787

Continental Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which states that the Northwest Territory will be divided into no fewer than three but no more than five new states. It prohibits slavery in the territory and establishes the process by which a territory becomes a state.

Royall Tylor’s The Contrast, the first professionally produced American comedy, opens in New York City.

Meeting in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention instead vote to create an entirely new form of government.

Edmund Randolph of Virginia presents the Virginia Plan, which places power into the hands of a strong centralized federal government, with representation proportional to each state’s population.

The New Jersey Plan advocates a national government that does not infringe on the rights of individual states, with all states represented equally regardless of population.

Roger Sherman’s “Connecticut Compromise” resolves the differences between the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan.

The Great Compromise of 1787 counts five slaves as three people for the purpose of congressional representation.

The Constitutional Convention approves the Constitution of the United States.

Benjamin Franklin’s influential essay “On the Constitution” is released to promote the recently drafted Constitution.

The Federalist Papers, 85 political essays written in support of the Constitution by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, begin to appear in a New York newspaper under the pseudonym “Publius.”

The Free African Society is founded.