Fort Mifflin

Philadelphia

Portrait by Artist to Come

QUICK FACTS

LINKS

SITE: Fort Mifflin
SITE: Olde Fort Mifflin Historical Society

LOCATION

Originally called Fort Island Battery and built by the British in 1771 on the Delaware River, the earthen fort was also known as Mud Island Fort, since it was build on Mud Island. In 1777 colonials held the Fort for five weeks against a British siege. Includes 14 restored buildings, weapons demonstrations, and cannon firings.

The First Congress faced a unique challenge, and those congressmen and senators who gathered in New York in the spring of 1789 were awed by what lay ahead of them. Not only would members of the Congress have to pass some promised amendments to the new Constitution, but they would have to fill out the bare framework of a government that the Philadelphia Convention had created, including the organization of the executive and judicial departments. Some therefore saw the First Congress as something in the nature of a second constitutional convention.

— Gordon S. Wood

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)