After the war, Davie rose to prominence in North Carolina as a traveling circuit court lawyer and orator. He was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons on multiple occasions from 1786 through 1798. He served as a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where he was instrumental in breaking the deadlock over state representation in Congress in what is known as the Great Compromise, brokered by Connecticut's Oliver Ellsworth. Davie persuaded his state's delegation to support the compromise, allowing proportional representation in the House but equal representation for each state in the Senate, thus placing a majority of states in favor and avoiding a possible collapse of the Convention. Davie returned to North Carolina before the Constitution was signed, but he argued for its passage at the North Carolina State Conventions in 1788 and 1789.