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Jensen, Merrill (ed.) / Ratification of the Constitution by the states: Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut
(1978)
V. Reports of and comments on New Jersey ratification, 18 December 1787-22 January 1788, pp. 192-195
Page 192
192 V REPORTS OF AND COMMENTS ON NEW JERSEY RATIFICATION 18 December 1787-22 January 1788 Moore Furman to Tench Coxe Trenton, 18 December1 I can with pleasure inform you that this day the Convention of New Jersey passed and ratified the Constitution of the United States: Unanimously. 1. RC, Coxe Papers, Tench Coxe Section, PHi. The letter was printed in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer on 21 December (Mfm:N.J. 28-C). Furman, a Trenton merchant, became the first mayor of Trenton in 1792. Coxe was a Phila- delphia merchant and Federalist essayist. For other reports of New Jersey's rati- fication, not printed below, see Mfm:N.J. 28. James Parker to John Stevens, Sr. Perth Amboy, 21 December (excerpt)1 I am glad to find the new Constitution ratified, which I think best upon the whole altho there are some exceptions to be made to some parts of it, but I think it may well be amended if necessary. 1. RC, Stevens Family Papers, NjHi. Parker, a Loyalist sympathizer, was mayor of Perth Amboy in the late 1780s. Pennsylvania Packet, 21 December1 A correspondent hopes that the unanimous ratification of the federal government, by the State of New Jersey, will satisfy the friends of the minority in Pennsylvania that there is no despotism in the new Con- stitution. The yeomanry of New Jersey love liberty. Nearly every field in that state has been dyed with the blood of its militia, shed in the cause of freedom, and nearly every farm in the state has been plundered by the British army during the late war. Certainly a people who have sacrificed so much for liberty could not have surrendered it by an unanimous vote. No commercial influence, no terror of an applauding gallery, no legal sophistry had any weight in the Conven- tion of that patriotic state in producing the ratification. The men who
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