THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE IN THREE VOLUMES 1765-1895 VOLUME ONE 1765-1788 CHICAGO CALLAGHAN & COMPANY 1901 The name of the United States serves well to remind us of the true relation between constitutional historians and legal constitutionalists. They are each concerned with the constitution, but from a different aspect. An historian is primarily occupied with ascertaining the steps by which a constitution has grown to be what it is. To a lawyer, on the other hand, the primary object of study is the law as it now stands; he is only secondarily occupied with ascertaining how it came into existence. This is absolutely clear if we compare the position of an American historian with the position of an American jurist. The historian of the American Union would not commence his researches at the year 1789; he would have a good deal to say about Colonial history and about the institutions of England. A lawyer lecturing on the Constitution of the United States would, on the other hand, necessarily start from the Constitution itself. But he would soon see that the Articles of the Constitution required a knowledge of the Articles of Confederation, that the opinions of Washington, of Hamilton and generally of the "Fathers," as one sometimes hears them called in America, threw light on the meaning of various constitutional articles, and further, that the meaning of the Constitution could not be adequately understood by anyone who did not take into account the situation of the Colonies before the separation from England and the rules of common law, as well as the general conceptions of law and justice inherited by English colonists from their English forefathers. —Lectures on the Law of the (English) Constitution, PREFACE. In these volumes the origin, progress and development of constitutional government in America is traced from the close of the French wars in 1765, the time of the Stamp Act, to the year 1895, and the principles on which our national civil system is founded are illustrated from the course of events. The national character of American institutions developed rapidly after 1765, and their definition took a dual form: one part finding expression locally, in the State Governments; the other, nationally, in the Government of the United States. In a former work1 I have attempted to narrate the origin and development of the State Governments and the local application by the Commonwealths of the principles at the basis of our institutions; in the present work, the theme is the biography of the national system. The division of the work into three volumes is a nat ural one. The first volume narrates the history of the country from the time of the Stamp Act to the completion of the Constitution by the Federal Convention. The period is of the early experience of the new Nation and the record discloses that our national system was evolved from colonial conditions and was in no sense a sudden inspiration or creation. The system proposed by the Federal Convention went to the people and was approved by them, though with a clear demand for its amendment. By 1804 this demand 1 A Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, 2 Vols. 486, 520 pp. 8vo. With maps. 1898. Harper & Bro., New York. |