On Saturday afternoon, 15 September 1787, near the end of the Constitutional Convention, the delegates approved the final draft of the Constitution and ordered it engrossed on parchment to be ready for signing on Monday …
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Paper Money: The Debtors’ Panacea or An Instrument of Fraud
The Constitutional Convention was called in 1787 to increase the powers of the Confederation Congress and to place restraints on the states. Article I, section 10 of the eventually proposed and ratified Constitution listed a …
Jefferson’s ‘Xerox’ Machines
Most of what we know about the private lives of the Founding generation of Americans comes from their correspondence. To many, letter-writing was an art that was cultivated by instruction and practice. Writing was expensive …
Metaphorically Speaking: Metaphors and Similes during the Debate over Ratifying the Constitution
Metaphors and similes can be powerful rhetorical devices. What are they? A metaphor compares two unlike objects or ideas and illuminates them in a word or phrase that otherwise might be expressed in many words. …
The Old Dominion Authorizes the Appointment of Delegates to the Constitutional Convention
From the very inception of the Articles of Confederation, many Americans felt that it was inadequate to serve as the country’s first constitution. Metaphorically speaking, it was felt that “the shattered fabric of the original …
The Magical Number Nine and the Ratification of the Constitution
Revolutionary-era Americans were a constitution-making people. On several occasions during the debate over the ratification of the Constitution of 1787, it was said that Americans knew more about the nature of government and liberty than …
Jeopardy! and the Signing of the Constitution
In January 1967, while in New York City doing research on my master’s thesis, I tried out for Jeopardy! The popular morning TV game show, then hosted by Art Fleming, had originated in 1964. I …
The Necessary and Proper Clause: Implementing Delegated Powers or a New Imperial Declaratory Act
With the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British Parliament initiated a new imperial policy that so alienated its North American colonies that within little more than a decade they seceded …
Locating the Conventions
Article 7 of the Constitution provides that once nine state conventions ratified the Constitution it would be implemented among the ratifying states. This was controversial because it violated the provisions in Article 13 of the …
Population and Constitution-Making, 1774–1792
Estimates of population were an issue in politics and constitution-making throughout the Revolutionary Era. In the First Continental Congress in 1774, the Virginia delegates, whose colony contained about twenty percent of the population of the …