Hafctms, wixJLi raux First American Constitutions DO NOT REMOVE CARDS FROM POCKET ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY FORT WAYNE, INDIANA 46802 You may return this book to any agency, branch, or bookmobile of the Alien County Public Library. OtMOO ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY it i' r - *, . I ^' >; .' ■ , - ill'.: !#>! ■■ a'-Vv; V yv; W''y,y: ' ■ ht ' ,' ’ > f .,\. :,#.'i';rT/ /'tj;,!. * ■ '. i vy'fc ;.' ■ ^:^‘ ■ ■ ky .; ' ■■ "i/vx,;y.|. i '--y ' ■ ■ ■ / '>^' H i "^V-,‘- 1 ^ ■ kim-n:.' V .___^ y .L- ■ i ^'. f ' ' 'Hi ■■■ • *y ■ ' ■ ''V.^'. ^'A'ipyj ' :fc,y V}'‘''V>*:z>‘Ul..r,-' ,' ' ■ ' :!y>:,*f;':'yiiX);yxy'i ■ ■ '' ' > - ! r ^ ,. ■ - V.. u'' \ '. 7 ■ ixaz7. :.X-fe507::L 7.-. 7 77 7 .: ' , ;;7,.7|/.::7'-S 'Mai z:77\^..;n7fes!7 ■ '..;'-' ■ ,’ ;';7 ■■ .' ■ ,., v,'^.‘'' ,: '!''''( ' ’ 7 '-* ■ ' ■ ■ ■ ■ 7 ■ > ■■ ■ / '. y ' i. 7^^ -^ \' ' - -I , ' '.''' ■ ’'''‘^'fiX'-'''''’y y " ■ = ' ®77.p;v.y.y'"7^ ' i - V I ■ i ■■ ■ V/-' ■ ■ n '• ; ■ • ■ V J •' ’ •' ■ , ■ ' ’’ \ > :• ■ ► ' ' • 'f ■ :-y ".'y-' ! 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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 https://archive.org/detaiis/firstamericanconOOadam THE FIRST AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS The Institute of Early American History and Culture is sponsored jointly by The College of William and Mary in Virginia and The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. THE FIRST AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era WILLI PAUL ADAMS Translated by Rita and Robert Kimber With a Foreword by Richard B. Morris Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture Williamsburg, Virginia by The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill ALLEH COUNTY PUBUC Lt fORT WAYNE, INDIANA Translation and revision of Republikanische Verfassung und biirgerliche Freiheit © 1973 by Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, Darmstadt und Neuwied © 1980 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-10887 ISBN 0-8078-1388-5 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Adams, Willi Paul, 1940- The first American constitutions. Translation and revision of Republikanische Verfassung und biirgerliche Freiheit. Bibliography; p. Includes index. 1. United States—Constitutional history. 2. Civil rights—United States. 3. United States —History. 4. State rights. 1 Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va. 11 Title. JK31.A2413 342'.73'o29 79-10887 ISBN 0-8078-1388-5 To Angela, again 'ymstai FOREWORD During the bicentennial year 1976, the American Historical Associa¬ tion sponsored an international contest for the best scholarly book or manuscript on the Era of the American Revolution written in a lan¬ guage other than English and completed since July 1,1969. The award consisted of underwriting the cost of the translation and publication of the prize book, along with the underwriting of the travel expenses incurred by the author in order to re-check sources and documents in the United States preparatory to the publication of the manuscript. After examining thirty-one entries, ranging from Arabic and Sinha¬ lese to Japanese and Serbo-Croatian, a jury of distinguished histo¬ rians chose this work by Dr. Willi Paul Adams, entitled in its original German version, Republikanische Verfassung und burgerliche Freiheit: Die Verfassungen und politischen Ideen der amerikanischen Revolution. Of the rich variety of topics in American constitutional history, the development of the constitutional structure of the nation and the several states prior to the Federal Convention of 1787 has received less attention in depth than the heroic subject deserves. Dr. Adams essays to repair this omission, and, while some of the ground he traverses has been traveled by others, perhaps nowhere else will one find so incisive and illuminating an analysis of such innovative con¬ cepts as constitutionalism, republicanism, and federalism, of ''mixed government" and other basic constitutional principles that set the American Revolution apart from those that followed. Dr. Adams's treatment of the concept of "constituent power" may be cited as one of numerous examples of the penetrating cri¬ tiques afforded by this study. As the author sees it, America invented "not only the thing but the name for it." Believing that the moral foundations of government rest upon the consent of the governed, the author shows how the attachment of a substantial body of the people to the cause of independence provided the underpinnings for the concept of constituent power. Adams discerns the roots of a people's government in the early Revolutionary machinery, the elabo¬ rate Patriot infrastructure, linking artisans and mechanics. In New England, he finds the church, the town meeting, the county conven¬ tions, and the provincial council and assembly joining forces to recruit a broad-based support for revolution. Outside the formal political Vll via Foreword structure, he might have added the militia as well. Tracing step-by- step the mechanism by which the delegates to the First and Second Continental Congresses were selected, and stressing extralegal meth¬ ods of registering the public's will, responsive in no small part to the necessities of the Revolutionary situation. Dr. Adams points to the result—a continental-wide Revolutionary machinery, both on the national and the state level. From these Revolutionary steps emerged a system of dual sovereignty, with the Congress exercising external authority and the states a limited or internal sovereignty, the latter bolstered by Article II of the Articles of Confederation, a crucial provision adopted with little debate. A logical extension of the notion that government rested upon the consent of the governed was the acceptance and incorporation in this dual constitutional structure of the doctrine of resort to "first principles," embracing the right to amend or change a constitution, a subject of great relevance to Americans today. Dr. Adams brings ripe scholarship to the task of tracing the some¬ what divergent paths taken by "democracy" and "republicanism" during the post-Revolutionary years, points to the plebiscitary ele¬ ment in the state constitutions, particularly in New England, where from the outset instructions to representatives were taken for granted, and demonstrates how pragmatic rather than doctrinaire principles determined constitutional and legal ideas on such subjects as office holding, slavery, and religious toleration. The author does not regard the Constitution that supplanted the Articles as representing a counterrevolution or restoration, differing in that respect from antifederalist historians writing in the populist tradition. A king was not restored; the British Cabinet system not adopted; but instead, political institutions were instituted incorporat¬ ing principles of division of powers and checks and balances, prin¬ ciples thoroughly grounded in the state constitutional experience in the Revolutionary and Confederation years. Dr. Adams is, admittedly, hardly the first to demonstrate the interaction of European and primarily English radical thought on American constitutional ideology. What gives special distinction to his analysis is the perspective of a European scholar that he brings to bear on the subject. Dr. Adams is an admirer of the American consti¬ tutional achievements, but his admiration is tempered by conscious¬ ness of occasional wrong turnings, as he views them. With authority he informs us about what was innovative in theory and practice in the Foreword ix American experience and wherein lay the debt to European legal and political theory. Above all, his book attests to the soundness of the constitutional ideas of the Founding Fathers, and serves to explain why the free republic they had created would prove durable. Richard B. Morris : %v1«.4_r*; • f 5; '^WipM < r# k '^'tw..-.-*'V ;** ■ *'« . *,- ’ ■ 4 A , (V .' fV JK.-'. y" ^\m .' ♦ •^’•' ,H-,U ■ " «i ♦ % f# « .> -^ii- V^'*» f , * \ 1 K *' ■■ »— T'T' ' / M.', 4JLiHim-^ t y •' _ _ 11? ' f 3 ^ r * "I. • ■ •V !»? * I .. ■ » i ' ^ ■ fr ■ !!r’"i« 4 » ' f .. T ' *' f it \'i I a M,, - - I > t ■ .|lri ' .;Tr's/-, iftyllHS ' 4 ' - i t 4 " • ( :-i :r' ' ' ■ •f ^ .* h ■ * ■ J% ..ws ' ',' ' ■ ’ ^ ■ '^ K • ■ # • Mfc '"I ■ t ‘M # ■ • *1 ’. »« ■ . 3 .^V « >* 1 » ; ♦ 1.. - f ti^ ♦ '. •> ■ r

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Willi Paul Adams - The First American Constitutions.pdf

Adams, Willi Paul, 1940-