The convention met August 26,1818, at Hartford. Governor Wolcott, one of the delegates from Litchfield, was elected president, and Mr. James Lanman, secretary. Mr. Pierpont Edwards was chosen chairman of a committee of three from each county to draft a constitution. The estimated strength of the parties was one hundred and five Republicans to ninety-five Federalists, and, of the drafting committee, five members belonged to the political minority. [af] An idea of the character of the men chosen for this important task of framing a new constitution is gained from a glance at some of the names. To begin with, over thirty-nine of the delegates to the convention either were Yale alumni or held its honorary degrees, and half of the drafting committee were her graduates. Ex-Governor Treadwell and Alexander Wolcott led the opposing parties, while their able seconds in command were General Nathaniel Terry of Hartford and Pierpont Edwards of New Haven. The latter still held the office of judge of the United States District Court, to which Jefferson had appointed him. Among the delegates, there were Mr. Amasa Learned, formerly representative in Congress, the ex-chief-judges Jesse Root and Stephen Mix Mitchell, Aaron Austin, a member of the Council for over twenty years until the party elections of 1818 unseated him, ex-Governor John Treadwell, and Lemuel Sanford,--all of whom had been delegates to the convention of 1788, called to ratify the constitution of the United States. Five members of the drafting committee were state senators, namely: Messrs. William Bristol, Sylvester Wells, James Lanman, Dr. John S. Peters of Hebron, and Peter Webb of Windham. Five others, Messrs. Elisha Phelps, Gideon Tomlinson, James Stevens, Orange Merwin, and Daniel Burrows were afterwards elected to that office, while Gideon Tomlinson and John S. Peters became in turn governors of the state. James Lanman, Nathan Smith (a member also of the committee), and Tomlinson entered the national Senate. Among the delegates, there were nearly a dozen well-known physicians, most of them to be found among the Tolerationists. Messrs. Webb, Christopher Manwaring of New London, Gideon Tomlinson of Fairfield, and General Joshua King of Ridgefield, together with Joshua Stow of Middletown (also on the drafting committee), had been for years the warhorses of the democracy, loyal followers of their leader Alexander Wolcott, who had been the Republican state manager from 1800 to 1817.