December 12 · This Day in America
In the same Philadelphia hall where the Declaration was signed, delegates vote 46 to 23 to ratify the new Constitution. Pennsylvania is the second state to say yes, but the first big one, and the first to do it over loud, organized opposition. The Anti-Federalists warned that a strong central government would swallow the liberties men had just bled for; the debate was fierce and the gallery was packed. The Constitution survives that argument here, and survives because of it. A document only governs a free people if the people who disagree with it can be persuaded, in the open, to live under it anyway. Pennsylvania is where that bargain is first tested on a large scale and holds. Five more states would follow within months. The framework written in this building in the summer is, by this December day, beginning to become a country.
Source: constitutioncenter.org
Also on this day · 1870
Born enslaved in South Carolina, Joseph Rainey is sworn in as the first Black member of the U.S. House of Representatives. A man whose family had to buy its own freedom now helps write the nation's laws. Within four years he becomes the first African American to preside over the House. Reconstruction's promise is brief and brutally rolled back, but on this day, in that chamber, it is real.
Source: history.house.gov