Rhode Island never sent delegates, and two of New York's three delegates did not stay at the convention for long. Therefore, as George Washington stated, the document was executed by "eleven states, and Colonel Hamilton." Washington signed the document first, and then moving by state delegation from north to south, as had been the custom throughout the convention, the delegates filed to the front of the room to sign their names. At the time the document was signed, Franklin gave a persuasive speech involving an anecdote on a sun that was painted on the back of Washington's Chippendale chair. As recounted in Madison's notes: Whilst the last members were signing it Doctr. Franklin looking towards the Presidents Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.Madison Notes for September 17, 1787. The Constitution was then submitted to the states for ratification, pursuant to its own Article VII. Slavery Slavery was one of the most difficult issues confronting the delegates. Slavery was widespread in the states at the time of the convention. At least a third of the convention's 55 delegates owned slaves, including all of the delegates from Virginia and South Carolina. Slaves comprised approximately one-fifth of the population of the states, and apart from northernmost New England, where slavery had largely been eliminated, slaves lived in all regions of the country. However, more than 90% of the slaves lived in the South, where approximately 1 in 3 families owned slaves (in the largest and wealthiest state, Virginia, that figure was nearly 1 in 2 families). The entire agrarian economy of the South was based on slave labor, and the Southern delegates to the convention were unwilling to accept any proposal that they believed would threaten the institution. Commerce and Slave Trade Compromise Whether slavery was to be regulated under the new Constitution was a matter of such intense conflict