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I can’t imagine the framers of the Constitution envisioned having 50 states, either.

26 Senators is a substantially different shape of legislative body than the current 100.

There were already 25 states (50 Senators) by the time James Madison died in 1836. The original Constitution framers had already seen the explosive growth of the US during their lifetimes. So I can't imagine they didn't envision it.

They might have envisioned it during their lifetimes, but I don't see how you can argue that things that happened after the Constitution/BoR were written informed their decisions while writing it.

So maybe we're saying that the Founding Fathers were, in fact, not visionaries. Maybe they only had the same myopic 10-20 year view that anyone else today does.

I think there is very little our founding fathers would recognize about today's american government, in a wide variety of ways.

Jefferson was probably the least myopic among them, in at least recognizing that all humans are myopic and struggle to have any concept of what the future holds.

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