For years I have wondered what did the Framers mean by this phrase. Did We mean just themselves, the elite, educated, landed gentry or did it truly mean all of the people? Opinions welcomed.
I get into “We the People” at length in the links at the bottom of the post.
If they had meant “We, this assembly here gathered” they would have said so. They were masters of the language and expressed exactly what they meant to express.
They were delegates to the Constitutional Convention, acting as the affirmed representatives of their constituency. “We, the People” means the people speaking through them. They were simply the wires through which the message was encoded and sent.
The "Preamble" contains the answer to what you wonder about.
We the People of the United States, blah, blah, blah, and blah, for the United States of America.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This a puzzle for some Americans misled into believing the Constitution is about them; it is not. The Constitution is about how the government is to function within the "herein granted" legislative powers. The Constitution is for the people, not about the people.