On this historic election day, a quote from Benjamin Franklin …

“Well, Doctor, what have we got – a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

The response is attributed to Benjamin Franklin — at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation — in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention.