Last Best Hope of Earth

Tag: Oliver Ellsworth

  • Constitution Sunday: Oliver Ellsworth defends the Taxing Power and Comments on Dual Sovereignties and Judicial Review

    Connecticut Ratifying Convention

    January 7, 1788

    When the Connecticut Ratifying Convention assembled, there were objections against the draft Constitution on the basis that it was “despotic” in its bestowing great power upon Congress: to the objectors, Congress having both the power of the purse and the power of the sword was intolerable. Oliver Ellsworth, however, defended the Constitution as written. Ellsworth, who would later become a United States Senator and a Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, had seen the ineffectiveness of those United States as existed under the Articles of Confederation and thus saw the draft Constitution as remedying the defects that caused that ineffectiveness.

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  • Constitution Sunday: “A Landholder” [Oliver Ellsworth] III

    “A Landholder” [Oliver Ellsworth] III

    Connecticut Courant (Hartford), November 19, 1787

    Following are excerpts from Oliver Ellsworth’s article in the Connecticut Courant:

    “A government capable of controling the whole, and bringing its force to a point is one of the prerequisites for national liberty. (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: A Further Reply to Elbridge Gerry: “A Landholder” [Oliver Ellsworth] V

    A Further Reply to Elbridge Gerry: “A Landholder” [Oliver Ellsworth] V

    Connecticut Courant (Hartford), December 3, 1787

    Following are excerpts from Oliver Ellsworth’s article, published in the Connecticut Courant:

    “The vice-president is not an executive officer, while the president is in discharge of his duty; and when he is called to preside his legislative voice ceases. (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: Reply to Elbridge Gerry: “A Landholder” [Oliver Ellsworth] IV

    Reply to Elbridge Gerry: “A Landholder” [Oliver Ellsworth] IV

    Connecticut Courant (Hartford), November 26, 1787

    Following are excerpts from Oliver Ellsworth’s article:

    “Such a body of men might be an army to defend the country in case of foreign invasion, but not a legislature, and the expence to support them would equal the whole national revenue. (more…)

  • Redefining Bicameralism

    charles_cotesworth_pinckney_by_benbridge
    Charles Pinckney. By: Henry Benbridge.

    Looking to the state governments’ creation of their respective senates, as explained in The Birth of the Senate, the creation of the Senate in the Constitution was a given, when the Constitutional Convention began. See Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, 553.

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