History teaches us that John Adams was not at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. That’s right, he was not there. He was in Great Britain at the request of Congress to try to enter into a new treaty of commerce with the nation we had just defeated in the Revolutionary War.
As you can imagine, Adams was not very well received by the British! He was shunned, ignored, and given no attention to his requests for a treaty. John wanted very much to be at the Convention. After all he had created or written the new Constitution for the new State of Massachusetts. He was most interested in helping with a new Constitution for the new American nation. But no. Congress asked him to stay put in England.