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 any other people in the world. During the Revolutionary era, Americans wrote more than a dozen state constitutions, two federal …
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 found myself in a large room with about twenty other hopeful contestants. We all took an “IQ-like” exam and had …
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 from the British Empire and declared their own independence. The Stamp Act of 22 March 1765 was perhaps Parliament’s most …
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 Articles of Confederation that specified that amendments to the Articles needed to be approved by Congress and then unanimously ratified …
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 thirteen colonies, demanded more votes than such small colonies as Rhode Island. They were outvoted by the delegates who insisted …
The most prolific and profound public debate in American history occurred over ratifying the Constitution in 1787–1790. Much of this debate occurred in the print media—newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets. Thousands of anonymous essays signed with a pseudonym appeared either as a single, stand-alone essay or as part of a series. After their original printing, essays …
Newspapers played a critical—perhaps a determinative—role in ratifying the Constitution. Between 1787 and 1790 ninety-five newspapers were printed throughout the United States—sixty-nine in Northern states and twenty-six in Southern states. Additionally four monthly magazines were also published in the North—the American Museum and the Columbian Magazine in Philadelphia, the American Magazine in New York City, …
In Article I, section 3, the Constitution provides that U.S. Senators were to be chosen by their state legislature. The legislatures had to decide exactly how they would elect their Senators. Under the Articles of Confederation, delegates to Congress were to “be annually appointed in such manner as the legislature of each state shall …
One of the most important parts of the debate over the ratification of the Constitution occurred on 22 March 1788 when the first thirty-six essays in The Federalist series were published as a separate volume. Written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the pseudonym “Publius,” these essays first appeared in New York …
Fifty-five of the most prominent men in America met in Philadelphia in the spring and summer of 1787 to correct the problems with the Articles of Confederation. Instead of amending the Articles, as they were instructed to do by the Confederation Congress and by their state legislatures, the delegates drafted a completely new form of government that they submitted to the American people to ratify. For a variety of reasons, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention chose to meet in secret. Consequently, as a self-contained body receiving no assistance from outside, the Convention served as a classroom in the science of government with some of the most learned instructors in the country. Much of this instruction was utilized by delegates during the year-long debate over the ratification of the Constitution.