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Jensen, Merrill; Kaminski, John P.; Saladino, Gaspare J. (ed.) / Ratification of the Constitution by the states: Pennsylvania
(1976)
B. The Dissent of the Minority of the Convention, pp. 617-640
Page 617
B. THE DISSENT OF THE MINORITY OF THE CONVENTION The "Dissent of the Minority of the Convention" was signed by twenty-one of the twenty-three members who had voted against rat- ification of the Constitution. The "Dissent" summarized the argu- ments against the Constitution set forth in the newspaper essays and pamphlets printed in Pennsylvania and elsewhere since mid-September, and the arguments Robert Whitehill, John Smilie, and William Find- ley had used in the state Convention. It attacked the secrecy of the Constitutional Convention and its lack of authority to write a new constitution. It denounced both the force used to secure a quorum of the Pennsylvania Assembly to make the calling of a state convention possible and the procedures of the state Convention and the behavior of the majority of its members. However, the "Dissent" was more than a political attack upon po- litical opponents. The document provided a detailed analysis of the Constitution from the point of view of men who believed in the sov- ereignty of the states, and who believed that the new government would destroy state sovereignty and deprive individual citizens of their rights and liberties. Most importantly of all, the "Dissent," as the "official" statement of the minority of the Convention, presented the amendments to the Constitution that Robert Whitehill had submitted to the Convention on 12 December. The majority of the Convention had refused to consider the amendments or to allow them to be placed on the Con- vention Journals. Although not an official document in a strict sense, the "Dissent" gave formal sanction to the growing demand for amend- ments in Pennsylvania, and it provided an example for men in other states as their conventions met to consider the Constitution. In 1807, in applying for office under the administration of Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Bryan, the author of "Centinel," declared that he had written the "Dissent of the Minority." If so, he must have had the help of minority members of the Convention. The "Dissent" was published on 18 December in the Pennsylvania Packet and as a broadside by Eleazer Oswald. By 9 February 1788 it had been reprinted in the Freeman's Journal, Pennsylvania Mercury, Carlisle Gazette, American Museum, Lancaster Zeitung, Philadelphis- che Correspondenz, and the Pittsburgh Gazette. For Pennsylvania re- sponses to the "Dissent," see the Pennsylvania Gazette, 26 December and 9 January 1788, and "A Citizen of Philadelphia," 23 January, all in IV:A below; "A Freeman" I, II, III, Pennsylvania Gazette, 23, 30 Jan- uary, 6 February and "Centinel" XVIII, Independent Gazetteer, 9 April, all in Commentaries on the Constitution; and Mfm:Pa. 278, 288, 430, 503. The "Dissent" circulated throughout the country in news- paper, broadside, and pamphlet form (see CC:353). 617
Copyright 1976 Wisconsin Historical Society Press.| For information on re-use see: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Copyright