Richard D. Berkshire County: A Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.
Greene, Evarts B. Religion and the State: The Making and Testing of an American Tradition. New York: New York University Press, 1941. Also, Ithaca: Cornell Paperbacks.
Handlin, Oscar and Mary F. Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy, Massachusetts, 1774–1861. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947.
Journal of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates, Chosen to Revise the Constitution of Massachusetts. Boston: Boston Daily Advertiser, 1853.
Meyer, Jacob C. Church and State in Massachusetts from 1740 to 1833. Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press, 1930.
Robinson, William A. Jeffersonian Democracy in New England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916.
Taylor, Robert J. Massachusetts, Colony to Commonwealth: Documents on the Formation of Its Constitution, 1775–1780. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961. Also, by same publisher, in paperback.
New York
Alexander, DeAlva Stanwood. A Political History of the State of New York. Vol. I. New York: Holt, 1906.
Fox, Dixon Ryan. The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York. New York, 1919.
Hammond, Jabez D. The History of Political Parties in the State of New York… . 2 vols. Fourth Edition. Syracuse: Hall, Mills, 1852.
Horton, John Theodore. James Kent: A Study in Conservatism, 1763–1847. New York: Appleton-Century, 1939.
Lincoln, Charles Z. The Constitutional History of New York. Vol. I. Rochester: Lawyers Publishing, 1906.
Litwack, Leon. North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821, Assembled for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution of the State of New York. Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1821.
Street, Alfred B. The Council of Revision of the State of New York. Albany, 1859.
Virginia
Ambler, Charles H. Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776 to 1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1910.
Chandler, J. A. C. History of suffrage in Virginia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1901.
———. Representation in Virginia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1896.
Green, Fletcher M. Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States, 1776–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930.
Grigsby, Hugh Blair. The Virginia Convention of 1829–30. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1855.
Journal, Acts and Proceedings, of a General Convention of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Assembled at Richmond… . Richmond: T. Ritchie, 1829.
Peterson, Merrill D. The Jefferson Image in the American Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Also, New York: Galaxy Books (Oxford University Press), paperback.
Pleasants, Hugh B. “Sketches of the Virginia Convention of 1829–30,” The Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond), XVII (1851), 147–54, 297–304.
Pole, John R. “Representation and suffrage in Virginia,” Journal of Southern History (Lexington, Kentucky), XXIV (1958), 16–50.
Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention of 1829–30. Richmond: Ritchie & Cook, 1830.
Sydnor, Charles. The Development of Southern Sectionalism, 1819–1843. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1853.
The published texts of the debates of the three conventions are of uneven quality. That of the Virginia convention is unquestionably the fullest and the best. Thomas Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, employed Arthur Stansbury to report the debates. Because Stansbury was both skilled in shorthand and experienced in legislative proceedings, as a recorder of Congressional debates, he was able to offer a superb stenographic transcription of everything said and done in the convention. The Massachusetts volume, the least satisfactory of the three, was composed from the day-to-day reports published in the Boston Daily Advertiser. Reprinted in 1853, this edition is used here. Two newspaper editors compiled the New York volume with the object of preserving in more regular and durable form than the fugitive columns of public journals a full and accurate record of the convention proceedings. They were assisted by a stenographer.
The selections from the texts have been reprinted literally. In the effort to provide a rounded view of each convention within the scope of this volume, it has been necessary to abridge most of the selections from the debates. Where one paragraph or more has been deleted from a speech, ellipses appear at both the beginning and end of the part deleted. Editorial insertions in the text are bracketed. The editor’s footnotes are clearly designated by the use of “[Ed.].”
The editor has provided a general introduction and historical introductions to each of the conventions, chronologies, headnotes to speeches or issues, a number of analytical tables, and a selective bibliography.
The Massachusetts constitution of 1780, the last of the Revolutionary constitutions, was the first to embody the full-blown theory of constituent sovereignty. It had been framed in special convention and ratified by the people in town meetings. In this and in its provisions for an elective chief magistrate, a broadly representative legislature, and an independent judiciary, it avoided some of the paramount errors of the early constitutions. John Adams was its principal architect; and as the consummate expression of his political science, the constitution, together with its declaration of rights, represented a masterful adaptation of Massachusetts political custom and habit to Revolutionary theory, as well as an ingenious blending of “aristocratic” and “monarchical” elements into the republican fabric according to the canons of “balanced” government. In this character particularly, the constitution was the pride of the conservative men who led the Federalist Party and guided the affairs of the commonwealth through most of its history.
But the very features of the constitution they most admired were, of course, viewed as anachronisms by men who espoused a government uniformly free and republican. The latter had voiced their opposition to key provisions of the constitution in the course of its ratification. Although they were never entirely reconciled to the frame of government, it tended to vindicate itself in its working; and when the opportunity came for revision in 1795, as provided by the constitution, they let it pass. Perhaps they realized that in the political complexion of the state at that time no satisfactory reform was possible. The minority of dissenters identified their cause with the rising Republican Party. It was sometimes in power after 1800, but it lacked the strength to reform the constitution. Caught up in the heated dissension between the parties, the issue of reform could not be resolved. Only when political tempers cooled in “the era of good feelings,” shriveling the Federalist ranks and making Republicanism respectable, even in Massachusetts, was a constitutional convention decided upon.
The separation of the District of Maine and its admission to statehood furnished the suitable occasion. The change in Maine’s status called for revision of the system of representation, a subject entangled in other difficulties as well, and this problem, together with a mounting crisis in the religious life of the commonwealth, caused the legislature to place the