"Constitutional Convention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather than questions of right and justice. His greatest opportunity for constructive statesmanship was offered in the making of the New York State constitution. But when it became known that Mr. Root had dominated the Constitutional Convention, that the proposed constitution was Mr. Root's constitution, that was enough; the voters rejected ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... convention in New York City in May 1860. At this convention she reported progress everywhere. Four thousand dollars from the Jackson and Hovey funds had been spent in the successful New York campaign, and similar work was scheduled for Ohio. In Kansas, women had won from the constitutional convention equal rights and privileges in state-controlled schools and in the management of the public schools, including the right to vote for members of school boards; mothers had been granted equal rights with fathers in the control and custody of their children, and married women ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... war—could have been averted must ever remain a question of useless speculation. In recognizing the institution of African slavery, with no provision for its ultimate removal, the Federal Union set out embodying the seeds of certain trouble. The wiser heads of the Constitutional Convention perceived this plainly enough; its dissonance to the logic of their movement; on the sentimental side its repugnancy; on the practical side its doubtful economy; and but for the tobacco growers and the cotton planters it had gone by the board. The North soon found slave labor unprofitable and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... quiet country neighborhood. No imagination could conceive who the wonderful speaker might be, and many insisted it must have been, indeed, "an angel from heaven." Some years afterwards, at the session of a Constitutional Convention in Massachusetts, Mr. King rose to make a motion. He had no sooner begun, than a Quaker member started up from a back seat, and, carried away by the first glimpse at solution of the long-standing mystery, cried out, "That's the man ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... Antes brothers is further accentuated by the activities of Frederick Antes. Between 1776 and 1784 he was a delegate to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, justice of the peace, president judge of the county courts, county treasurer, commissioner of purchase for Northumberland County, a representative in the General Assembly, and a colonel of militia.[17] With Henry on the West Branch ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... The great-grandfather was a minister in Newburyport, one of those, as Dr. Hale says, "who preached sermons when young men went out to fight the French, and preached sermons again in memory of their death when they had been slain in battle." The grandfather was John Lowell, a member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts in 1780. It was he who introduced into the Bill of Rights a phrase from the Bill of Rights of Virginia, "All men are created free and equal," with the purpose which it effected of setting free every man then ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... English Constitution cannot be made except from these materials. Now these elements are the accidents of a period and a region; they belong only to one or two centuries in human history, and to a few countries. The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it. The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people. These semi-filial ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Alleyne Otis, who in 1776 was elected a representative in the great Congress of the Revolution. James did not live to see his brother become speaker of the House, but he witnessed in 1780 his service as a member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts. Afterward, in 1787, he was a commissioner to negotiate a settlement with the participants in Shay's Rebellion. With the organization of the new national government he became Secretary of the Senate of the United ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Rebellion. Washington's Influence. Continental Sects. Hamilton's Motion for a Stronger Government. Massachusetts's Motion. Forwardness of Virginia. Of Madison. Origin of Annapolis Convention, 1786. Its Action. Meeting of the Constitutional Convention, 1787. The Virginia Plan. New Jersey Plan. Growth of the Constitution. Personnel of the Convention. Its Distinguished Men. Subsequent Careers of Many. Rutledge. Rufus King. Completion of the Constitution. Ratification. Struggle in Massachusetts. In Virginia. In New ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... August of the same year, and subsequently served under General Bragg in the invasion of Kentucky and the campaign of Chickamauga. He was governor of Kentucky in 1887-1891, was a member of the Kentucky constitutional convention of 1890, and in 1896 was the candidate of the National or "Gold" Democrats for vice-president of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... as his great legacy to the United States his interpretation of the Constitution. While chief-justice he became a member of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia in company with Madison and Monroe, both of whom had been President. He gave the Federal Constitution its liberal interpretation, that it was not merely a bone thrown to the general government, which must be watched with suspicion while it ate, but that it was a document ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... In 1787 the constitutional convention met in Philadelphia, and it was a fitting thing that the statesman and philosopher should live to aid in framing laws by which his country is still governed. He was now too weak to stand long, so that his speeches on various questions had to be read out by ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... expedient for the people of the Commonwealth of Liberia to take into their own hands the whole work of self-government including the management of all their foreign relations." Forced to act for herself Liberia called a constitutional convention and on July 26, 1847, issued a Declaration of Independence and adopted the Constitution of the Liberian Republic. In October, Joseph Jenkin Roberts, Governor of the Commonwealth, was elected the first ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... decision of the Supreme Court, at the same time maintaining, most illogically, that his great principle of popular sovereignty remained in force nevertheless. Meanwhile, the proslavery people of western Missouri, the so-called "border ruffians," had invaded Kansas, set up a constitutional convention, made a constitution of an extreme pro-slavery type, the "Lecompton Constitution," refused to submit it fairly to a vote of the people of Kansas, and then referred it to Congress for acceptance,—seeking thus to accomplish the admission of Kansas as a ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... United States might almost be written as the continuous record of the influence of great speakers upon others. The colonists were led to concerted action by persuasive speeches. The Colonial Congresses and Constitutional Convention were dominated by powerful orators. The history of the slavery problem is mainly the story of famous speeches and debates. Most of the active representative Americans have been leaders because of their ability to impress their fellows by their power of expressing sentiments and enthusiasms ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.—Congress issued the call early in 1787, and delegates from twelve states [19] met at Philadelphia and framed the Constitution of the United States. Washington was made president of the convention, and among the members were many of the ablest men ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster |
