Home > Ratification of the Constitution > Ratification Timeline
Timeline of the Ratification of the Constitution
by Gordon Lloyd
All by State
Click on document to see a description and a link to the full text.
View All by Date | View All by State |
View only "Indoors" Events | View only "Out-of-Doors" Events |
View only Federalists | View only Antifederalists |
View only Essential Federalists | View only Essential Antifederalist
|
 Pennsylvania | October 1787
|  Oct 5, 1787: Centinel I (Pennsylvania)
| The Antifederalist Centinel suggests that "all the blessings of liberty and the dearest privileges of freemen are now at stake and dependent on your present conduct." But since the plan is inspired by John Adams's political thought which presumes 1) a balancing of the orders of society and 2) that "the administrators of every government are actuated by views of private interest and ambition & [and] & jarring adverse interests." Furthermore, the plan encourages the exercise of extensive powers over an extensive territory which is a recipe not "for a regular balanced government & but & a permanent ARISTOCRACY."
Full Text of Document |
|
| Oct 10, 1787: James Wilson Speech, Pennsylvania Packet (Pennsylvania)
| Federalist James Wilson _ s "State House Speech" was the first official, and most often cited, defence of the Constitution. Wilson directly confronted the objections of fellow Constitutional Convention delegates, Elbridge Gerry, George Mason, and Edmund Randolph who refused to sign the Constitution. He argued that a Bill of Rights, while necessary and salutary at the state level, was "superfluous and absurd" at the federal level of government. Antifederalists treated this speech as representative of the Federalist position.
Full Text of Document |
|
|
| November 1787
| Nov 28, 1787: Old Whig No. 7 (Pennsylvania)
| The Old Whig reiterates a central Antifederalist objection to the proposed Constitution: the delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not have the authority to scrap the Articles of Confederation, nor do they have the authority to deny the people of the states the right to alter or abolish the plan submitted to them. Accordingly, Old Whig suggests that another Continental Convention, collecting the opinions of the people is in order.
Full Text of Document |
|
| Nov 30, 1787: Centinel IV (Pennsylvania)
| Concerning the proposed Constitution, the Antifederalist Centinel is distrustful of "the conduct of its authors and patrons." After all, "the evil genius of darkness presided at its birth, it came forth under the veil of mystery, its true features being carefully concealed, and every deceptive art has been and is practicing to have this spurious brat received as the genuine offspring of heaven born liberty & .It is to be lamented that the interested and designing have availed themselves so successfully of the present crisis" to create a government destructive to the principles of liberty.
Full Text of Document |
|
|
| December 1787
| Dec 27, 1787: Centinel VII (Pennsylvania)
| The Antifederalist Centinel, writing shortly after the passage of the Constitution by the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, refuses to validity of the outcome. "Will the act of one sixth of the people, and this too founded on deception and surprise, bind the community? Is it thus that the altar of liberty, so recently crimsoned with the blood of our worthies, is to be prostrated and despotism reared on its ruins? Certainly not." He urges the people to require their representatives to call a convention for the purpose of overturning the proposed plan created by "a junto composed of the lordly and high minded gentry, of the profligate and the needy office hunters, of men principally who in the late war skulked from the common danger."
Full Text of Document |
|
| Dec 29, 1787: Centinel VIII (Pennsylvania)
| The Antifederalist Centinel; asks where is the crisis that demands the hasty adoption of an untried plan of government? There is none: "a happy equality and independency pervades the community; it is here the human mind, untrammeled by the restraints of arbitrary power, expands every faculty & The unfortunate and oppressed of all nations fly to this grand asylum where liberty is ever protected, and industry crowned with success." He thus questions the motives of the Framers and accusing them of being "conspirators against our liberties." In fact, "so flagrant, so audacious a conspiracy against the liberties of a free people is without precedent."
Full Text of Document |
|
|
|
| |
