beings as a consequence of that equality. Writers such as Locke and Grotius are regularly cited, and delegates often draw on English and Roman, as well as American, history to support their arguments. Experience likewise plays a crucial role in the convention deliberations, with delegates assessing not only the effects of existing practices and institutions in their own states but also the effects of alternative constitutional arrangements in sister states.
The importance of the task of constitutional reform attracted the most talented political figures in the states to the conventions. Thus the Virginia convention included two former presidents (James Madison and James Monroe), the chief justice of the Supreme Court (John Marshall), future justice Philip Barbour, and two United States senators, including John Randolph, who attended sessions with crepe on his hat and sleeves in mourning for the old constitution.8 The Massachusetts convention boasted former president John Adams, Supreme Court justice Joseph Story, and future senator Daniel Webster, among others, while the New York convention included future president Martin Van Buren, Chancellor James Kent, and Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer.
Yet the convention debates also highlight the contributions of lesser known figures. Constitutional conventions are a peculiarly American invention, designed to provide ordinary citizens an opportunity to chart their political futures. The seriousness and good sense exhibited by virtually all the delegates confirms how important political responsibilities can elevate those entrusted with them. And reading these debates can inform and instruct later generations that may likewise be called upon to set the direction for the future course of their political societies.
Indeed, this collection of convention debates is just as timely now as when it was first published in 1966. In the intervening decades scholars such as Gordon Wood, Bernard Bailyn, and Donald Lutz have revolutionized the study of the American founding, highlighting the political alternatives available to the founding generation and the deliberation that went into their choices among those alternatives.9 This volume complements that research, showing that as the nation grew and developed, nineteenth-century Americans had to confront anew the perennial question of how to guarantee liberty and promote self-government. Also, since the initial publication of these debates many countries throughout the world have thrown off dictatorships. This volume provides a model of self-government, of popular participation in making fundamental political choices, that can serve as an inspiration to those struggling to secure liberty and create viable popular governments. Finally, for students this volume illustrates how political liberty can encourage and elevate public discourse. By reading and reflecting on these debates, they can better understand the enduring issues relating to liberty and popular rule that they will confront as citizens.
G. Alan Tarr
Suggested Further Reading
Recent decades have witnessed a burgeoning interest in American state constitutions and American political development. Listed below are sources pertinent to constitutional development and constitutional debates in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, and in the American states more generally, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the Civil War.
Bruce, Dickson D. The Rhetoric of Conservatism: The Virginia Convention of 1829–30 and the Conservative Tradition in the South. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1982.
Cogan, Jacob Katz. “The Look Within: Property, Capacity, and suffrage in Nineteenth-Century America.” Yale Law Journal 107 (November 1997): 473–98.
Dinan, John J. The American State Constitutional Tradition. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006.
———. The Virginia State Constitution: A Reference Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006.
Elazar, Daniel J. “The Principles and Traditions Underlying American State Constitutions.” Publius 12 (Winter 1982): 11–25.
Fehrenbacher, Don E. Constitutions and Constitutionalism in the Slaveholding South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Finkelman, Paul, and Stephen E. Gottlieb, eds. Toward a Usable Past: Liberty under State Constitutions. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
Freyer, Tony A. Producers versus Capitalists: Constitutional Conflict in Antebellum America. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994.
Friedman, Lawrence M. “Fallacies of American Constitutionalism.” Rutgers Law Journal 35 (Summer 2004): 1327–69.
———. “State Constitutions in Historical Perspective.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 496 (March 1988): 33–42.
Fritz, Christian G. “Alternative Visions of American Constitutionalism: Popular Sovereignty and the Early American Constitutional Debate.” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 24 (Winter 1997): 287–357.
Galie, Peter J. The New York State Constitution: A Reference Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991.
———. Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York. New York: Fordham University Press, 1996.
Hall, Kermit L., and James W. Ely Jr., eds. An Uncertain Tradition: Constitutionalism and the History of the South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.
Hall, Kermit L., Harold M. Hyman, and Leon V. Sigal, eds. The Constitutional Convention as an Amending Device. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association and American Political Science Association, 1981.
Handlin, Oscar, and Mary Flug Handlin. Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1966.
Hoar, Roger Sherman. Constitutional Conventions: Their Nature, Powers, and Limitations. Boston: Little, Brown, 1919.
Hulsebosch, Daniel Joseph. Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664–1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Lutz, Donald S. Popular Consent and Popular Control: Whig Political Theory in the Early State Constitutions. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
McHugh, James T. Ex Uno Plura: State Constitutions and Their Political Cultures. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.
Novak, William J. The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Scalia, Laura J. America’s Jeffersonian Experiment: Remaking State Constitutions, 1820–1850. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999.
Steinfeld, Robert J. “Property and Suffrage in the Early American Republic.” Stanford Law Review 41 (January 1989): 335–76.
Sturm, Albert L. “The Development of American State Constitutions.” Publius 12 (Winter 1982): 57–98.
Sutton, Robert P. Revolution to Secession: Constitution Making in the Old Dominion. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989.
Tarr, G. Alan. Constitutional Politics in the States: Contemporary Controversies and Historical Patterns. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
———, Understanding State Constitutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Williams,
