Ratification of the Constitution marked the end of the Revolutionary era in American history, and a most fitting climax to Franklin’s public life. The previous October the Pennsylvania Assembly had reelected him again. He had intended to retire after his second term but lacked the resolve. “I must own that it is no small pleasure to me, and I suppose it will give my sister pleasure,” he wrote Jane Mecom the week after his reelection, “that after such a long trial of me, I should be elected a third time by my fellow citizens, without a dissenting vote but my own. This universal and unbounded
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