An Assembly of Demigods: Word Portraits of the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention by Their Contemporaries

Writing to his dear friend John Adams from Paris in August 1787, Thomas Jefferson referred to the then-meeting Constitutional Convention as "an Assembly of demigods," a turn of phrase that reflected Jefferson's considerable confidence in the intellectual powers of the men who gathered in Philadelphia to create a new government for the United States. John Kaminski and Timothy Moore's An Assembly of Demigods introduces that cast of characters as seen through the eyes of their fellow delegates and other contemporaries. Gracious in praise, withering in critique, the Founders reflect in their own words on the people and ideas that informed--and, even more, transformed--the fabric of early national America.