Editor’s note: This story is part of Deseret Magazine’s January/February double issue addressing political polarization. In early July 1787, the delegates who gathered in Philadelphia to create a written constitution for the new nation faced the real prospect of failure. In his letter transmitting the Constitution to Congress, George Washington attributed this surprising turn of events — what one popular account of the convention called the “Miracle at Philadelphia” — to the “spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.”