The Founding Fathers of the United States were the political leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or otherwise took part in the American Revolution in winning American independence from Great Britain, or who participated in framing and adopting the United States Constitution in 1787-1788, or in putting the new government under the Constitution into effect. Within the large group known as "the founding fathers," there are two key subsets, the Signers (who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776) and the Framers (who were delegates to the Federal Convention and took part in framing or drafting the proposed Constitution of the United States. Most historians define the "founding fathers" to mean a larger group, including not only the Signers and the Framers but also all those who, whether as politicians or jurists or statesmen or soldiers or diplomats or ordinary citizens, took part in winning American independence and creating the United States of America.

The eminent American historian Richard B. Morris, in his 1973 book Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, identified the following seven figures as the key founding fathers: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Warren G.

Harding, then a Republican Senator from Ohio, coined the phrase "Founding Fathers" in his keynote address to the 1916 Republican National Convention. He used it several times thereafter, most prominently in his 1921 inaugural address as President of the United States. In the winter and spring of 1786-1787, twelve of the thirteen states chose a total of 74 delegates to attend what we now know as the Federal Convention in Philadelphia.

Nineteen delegates chose not to accept election or attend the debates; for example, Patrick Henry of Virginia thought that state politics was far more interesting and important than national politics, though during the ratification controversy of 1787-1788 he claimed, "I smelled a rat." Rhode Island did not send delegates, because of its politicians' suspicions of the Convention delegates' motivations. Of the 55 who did attend at some point, no more than 38 delegates showed up at one time.

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