Page View
Kaminski, John P.; Saladino, Gaspare J.; Moore, Timothy D. (Historian); Lannér-Cusin, Johanna E.; Schoenleber, Charles H.; Reid, Jonathan M.; Flamingo, Margaret R.; Fields, David P. (ed.) / Ratification of the Constitution by the states: Maryland (1)
11 (2015)
I. The debate over the Constitution in Maryland, 17 September-30 November 1787, pp. 3-67
Page 6
I. DEBATE OVER CONSTITUTION 2. Tilghman probably saw one of the Philadelphia newspaper printings of the Consti- tution. On 19 September alone, four Philadelphia newspapers printed the Constitution. On 22 September, Thomas and Samuel Hollingsworth, Baltimore merchants, wrote that "The Proceedings of the Convention is much approved of" in Baltimore (to Levi Hol- lingsworth, Hollingsworth Family Papers, PHi). Editors' Note The Publication and Circulation of the Constitution in Maryland 22 September-December 1787 The Maryland act of 26 May 1787 appointing delegates to the Con- stitutional Convention required the delegates "to report the proceed- ings of the said convention, and any act agreed to therein, to the next session of the general assembly" (Appendix II, RCS:Md., 805). Some time after the Constitutional Convention adjourned on 17 September 1787, Maryland's Convention delegates forwarded the "Act of the late Convention at Philadelphia" to Maryland Governor William Smallwood. Maryland's Constitutional Convention delegates probably transmit- ted one or more of the 500 official copies of the Convention's report that were printed as a six-page broadside by John Dunlap and David C. Claypoole, printers of the Pennsylvania Packet. This report consisted of (1) the Constitution, (2) the two resolutions of the Convention, and (3) the 17 September letter of the President of the Convention (George Washington) to the President of Congress. Each of the Convention's forty-one delegates present on 17 September had received several cop- ies of the broadside, some of which were probably sent to state officials. Dunlap and Claypoole did not provide a heading to the broadside (Evans 20818). (For more on this broadside, see CC:76.) On 19 Sep- tember the Constitutional Convention report was printed in the Penn- sylvania Packet and three other Philadelphia newspapers. Some of these printings circulated in Maryland. All four Maryland newspapers published in the fall of 1787 printed the report of the Constitutional Convention by 3 October. John Hayes printed the report in a two-page "Extraordinary" issue of the Baltimore Maryland Gazette on 22 September under the heading "PLAN of the NEW FEDERAL GOVERNMENT." (The heading was the same one used by the Pennsylvania Gazette when it printed the report on 19 September.) Three days later the report appeared in William Goddard's Maryland Journal, a semiweekly, under a similar title. Goddard, apparently em- ploying the same type he used in his Maryland Journal, struck a two- page, triple-columned broadside of the report. At the bottom of the second page, Goddard included his colophon (Evans 45176). 6
Copyright 2015 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.| For information on re-use see: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Copyright