February 6, 1788
Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
At the conclusion of the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, John Hancock requested to “close the business with a few words.” He began with an endorsement: the Constitution—amended or not—was destined to deliver political freedom and dignity to the country. This was particularly so given the exhaustive debate that the draft Constitution fostered all of which tended to improve the proposed government.
(more…)February 5, 1788
Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
The draft Constitution had its parts that inspired and other parts that terrified. Nathaniel Barrell, either as a sign of his modesty or as a way to relate to his fellow residents of Massachusetts, claimed that he would not speak with the eloquence of a Cicero but would articulate his objections to the Constitution.
(more…)Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
February 4, 1788
Building consensus is a challenge. In the United States Congress, consensus has always been difficult to build because of the diversity—geographic and otherwise—of its Representatives and Senators, given their assigned districts and states. But when the Constitution was being debated, the stakes were as high as they have been in American history: consensus was needed not for some legislation, small or large, but for reworking the structure of the states’ and federal government and putting the country on a new, bolder trajectory. At the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, Charles Jarvis articulated his support for the draft Constitution—recognizing its merits—but only if the Constitution was passed with the amendments.
(more…)Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
February 4, 1788
Some governmental systems are engines of tyranny. They may be dressed up as virtuous systems, ones that account for all members of society, but the consequences flowing from the system always speak louder than the rhetoric its leaders spout. At the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, in February 1788, Isaac Backus arose and spoke in favor of the draft Constitution as it accounted for and did not contain many features of a system that leads to tyranny.
(more…)Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
February 1, 1788
Changing a system—particularly a system about which one is fond—is difficult. For some, the system that the Articles of Confederation created was an ideal one as it permitted states to maintain a level of autonomy that the proposed Constitution would subsume. For Samuel Nasson, at the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, this was a travesty given that the country had fought so hard to free its member states from Great Britain and its attempts to “enslave us, by declaring her laws supreme.”
(more…)Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
January 31, 1788
John Hancock, at the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, made a motion for the Convention to adopt the Constitution as it was a document that would not only “advance the prosperity of the whole world” but create a form of government that would “extend its good influences to every part of the United States.” But, recognizing that a contingent in the Convention would not support the Constitution without some modifications, Hancock argued that a series of “some general amendments” accompany the approved Constitution so as to “quiet the apprehensions of gentlemen.” Samuel Adams, recognizing that many people in other Conventions had similarly felt that a set of amendments was not only necessary but urgently needed, saw that including amendments would “have the most salutary effect throughout the union.”
(more…)Massachusetts Ratifying Convention.
January 31, 1788
Reverend Daniel Shute rose at the convention to speak not for—but against—adding a religious test as a qualification for offices that the Constitution created. He opined that such tests “would be attended with injurious consequences to some individuals, and with no advantage to the whole.”
(more…)Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
January 30, 1788
Revolutions, civil wars, and coups haunt leaders of all types of governments. The very prospect of these events conjures awful images, and every leader searches for ways to prevent and mitigate them. For some, tamping down dissent with force and papering over the people’s differences through campaigns of nationalism are not only sufficient but necessary to maintain the status quo. For others, democracies, there must be some tailoring of the government’s contours to the people; even as generations pass, morals change, and principles transform.
(more…)Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
January 30, 1788
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, it was not a uniquely American question of how to deal with the concept of slavery. It was an institution that, as each year passed, was becoming more and more antiquated; a relic of a time when treating humans as beasts was widespread and accepted. Yet the question remained of how a federal government or other states could wean a part of society—in the United States, the South—off of slavery. Then, there was the question of whether a federal government or other states should even be so intimately involved in another state’s business.
(more…)Massachusetts Ratifying Convention
January 30, 1788
One of the most fundamental concerns when framing a Constitution, or any law for that matter, is the danger of abuse. Those who believe that power will be abused will choose to err on the side of depriving a government of power. And those people would go one step further to posit that where there are ambiguities in a law, that law should not stand. Abraham Holmes and Christopher Gore debated this point at the Massachusetts ratifying convention.
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