Let's be more discreet about the Founding Fathers. Of the 55 men who at one time or another attended the convention in Philadelphia that summer, only 25 were slave holders. Both Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson, two of the delegates among the eight member Pennsylvania delegation, had domestic slaves which they had freed.

Although many historians subsume such slaveholding luminaries under the heading Founding Fathers (such as Jefferson), those luminaries did not attend the Convention, did not propose Constitutional provisions, did not debate them, and did not vote on them.