government, they have an enduring import and a high degree of theoretical interest. But they are political, not academic, debates; one must not expect to find in them the coherence and consistency of cloistered philosophy. And although they speak, often with great cogency, to our time, they cannot be detached from their place in the stream of history, which was at the point of deepest disturbance between the faintly aristocratic republican order of the nation’s classic age and the new democracy of the nineteenth century.
Merrill D. Peterson University of Virginia July 1964
General
De Grazia, Alfred. Public and Republic: Political Representation in America. New York: Knopf, 1951.
Douglass, Elisha P. Rebels and Democrats: The Struggle for Equal Rights and Majority Rule During the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955.
Hartz, Louis. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955. Also, New York: Harvest Books (Harcourt, Brace & World), paperback.
Merriam, Charles E. A History of American Political Theories. New York: Macmillan, 1920.
Mims, Edwin, Jr. The Majority of the People. New York: Modern Age, 1941.
Swisher, Carl Brent. American Constitutional Development. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954.
Tocqueville, de, Alexis. Democracy in America. Trans. Phillips Bradley. 2 vols. New York: Knopf, 1944. Also, New York: Schocken Books, paperback.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. Rise of the New West: 1819–1829. Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1959. Also, New York: Collier Books, paperback.
Williamson, Chilton. American Suffrage from Property to Democracy: 1760–1860. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960.
Wright, Benjamin F., Jr. American Interpretations of Natural Law: A Study in the History of Political Thought. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962.
Massachusetts
Birdsall, 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.
