S. A. Isaev. The Creation of the U. S. Constitution: Pennsylvanian context of the process // Petersburg historical journal, no. 3, 2022, pp. 110–135
Abstract:
The U. S. Constitution, which is still in force, was created by the Constitutional Convention, working behind closed doors in Philadelphia, May — September 1787. That time Philadelphia was the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but not of the U. S., whereas Continental Congress was working in New York City. The article deals with a question: how the events taking place in Pennsylvania could influence the constitutional process of the U. S.? Author demonstrates that the political development of both U. S., and Pennsylvania had the same trend. In Pennsylvania the State Constitution of 1776 was in force, and there was a struggle for its remodeling, approaching success in the year 1790. In the U. S., the Articles of Confederation 1781 were the only law of land, but the Constitutional Convention proposed the reform of the political model transforming the USA from Confederation to the federal republic. Simultaneously, for both Pennsylvania, and the USA the starting point was a primitive democracy with every power concentrated in one elective collective body, as it was recommended by Jean Jacques Rousseau, — and the arrival point, a democracy of the more complicated model: with division, or rather distribution, of power, legislative, executive, and judicial. The political events in Pennsylvania, 1776–1787 sharply demonstrated the faults of the primitive democracy and provoked efforts aiming the reforming of the American statehood. There were nine Pennsylvanian politicians who took part in the Constitution Convention (John Dickinson, who was sent by the State of Delaware, is added). All they subscribed the U. S. Constitution and made efforts for its ratification. But federalism proposed by Pennsylvanians was not equivalent to the federalism of the U. S. Constitution: they proposed more centralized model, without “one State — one voice” principle at all.
Keywords:
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 1787, J. Dickinson, U. S. Constitution, 1787, G. Morris, R. Morris, Pennsylvania Constitution, 1776, Pennsylvania Council of Censors, 1783, Pennsylvanian Anti-Constitutionalists, Pennsylvanian Constitutionalists, J. Wilson.
Author:
Isaev, Sergei Aleksandrovich — Candidate of sciences in history, senior researcher, acting chairman of the Department of General History, St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences.