Draft:Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution

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The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (DHRC) is a comprehensive collection of primary sources which document the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 and 1788. The forty-five volumes of the DHRC have transcribed and annotated over 70,000 documents which evidence the nationwide debate over and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The DHRC's longstanding team of editors include Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino and Richard Leffler.

The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution

In the 1930s the National Historical Publications Commission (the "NHPC") envisioned a project to collect primary sources documenting the history of the ratification of the Constitution. The idea was first raised in the 1890s before it gained traction in 1936, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Archives Act into law in 1932. The National Archives Act created the National Archives as an independent agency (48 Stat. 1122) and established the NHPC.

The mission of the NHPC was to "make plans, estimates, and recommendations for historical works and collections of sources it considers appropriate for preserving, publishing or otherwise recording at public expense." (44 U.S.C. 2504) Now called the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (the "NHPRC"), the work of publishing historical records of national significance is largely conducted by historical documentary editions, which are multivolume collections of annotated documents.

With its first federal grant, the NHPC funded 23 initial projects, including The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. The stated goal of the decades-long project has been to document "as completely as possible what the people ratifying the Constitution understood it to mean, why they ratified it, and what forces and issues were involved in the struggle over it." Due to the "extraordinary dimensions" of the project, the DHRC is "on a different order of magnitude from most other documentary history projects." It is widely acknowledged that the DHRC is a "monumental," "comprehensive," "editorial masterpiece" which documents "the tortuous path of ratification" of the Constitution.[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24486670?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

According to historian Gordon Wood, Kaminski and his editors have put together "one of the greatest collections of debates over the basic issues of politics and constitutionalism that the Western world possesses." "Rarely will we find a more profound or more comprehensive discussion of the problems of power, liberty, representation, federalism, rights, and all the other aspects of politics than we have in these volumes. This record is not only a national treasure, it is a world treasure.”[3]

As the authoritative collection of primary sources documenting the ratification of the Constitution, the DHRC has transcribed and annotated over 70,000 documents ranging from records of town meetings, convention and legislative journals and debates, newspapers articles and essays, political cartoons, poetry, personal and public letters, broadsides, journals and diary entries.

The forty-five volumes of the DHRC, which now include the documentary history of the Bill of Rights, are academic publications. As a result, they are generally held by universities, law schools, and research libraries. With new digital technology, the DHRC is now available online and is word searchable using this link to the CSAC: https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AConstitution It is also digitally available through Rotunda, the electronic arm of the University of Virginia Press, which describes the DHRC as a "landmark work in historical and legal scholarship": https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/RNCN.html

The DHRC is organized as follows:

Vol. I Constitutional Documents and Records, 1776–1787 Ratification of the Constitution by the States

Vol. II Pennsylvania

Vol. III Delaware * New Jersey * Georgia * Connecticut

Vols. IV–VII Massachusetts (4 vols.)

Vols. VIII–X Virginia (3 vols.)

Vols. XI–XII Maryland (2 vols.)

Vols. XIII–XVIII Commentaries on the Constitution: Public and Private (6 vols.)

Vol. XIX–XXIII New York (5 vols.)

Vols. XXIV–XXVI Rhode Island (3 vols.)

Vol. XXVII South Carolina

Vol. XXVIII New Hampshire

Vol. XXIX Confederation Congress and Vermont

Vols. XXX–XXXI North Carolina (2 vols.)

Vols. XXXII–XXXIV Pennsylvania Supplemental Documents (3 vols.)

Cumulative Index to Volumes I–XXXIV: Vols. XXXV–XXXVI

The Bill of Rights: Vol. XXXVII Origins

Vols. XXXVIII–XLII (forthcoming)

Prior to the publication of the DHRC, scholars relied on the five-volume collection of documents compiled by 19th century historian Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (commonly called Elliot's Debates). For many years Elliot's Debates was the authoritative canon of primary sources from this period, originally published beginning in 1827 and 1830 and revised in 1861 after Elliot's death.

Building on Elliot's Debates, the DHRC compiles primary sources created by the nearly 1,700 members of the thirteen state legislatures involved in calling for state ratifying conventions. In turn, the state ratification conventions involve an overlapping group of another 1,648 convention delegates. As described by Kaminski, the DHRC also captures records generated by "local and state officials, people of influence who held no public office, and private citizens of all descriptions who directly or indirectly became involved in the most important political debate of the time."

The DHRC compiles materials from "hundreds of libraries, archives, historical societies, private collections, auction-sale catalogs, and published primary sources," among other records. The DHRC also contains applicable materials from the 150 contemporaneous newspapers read by the founding generation, broadsides, pamphlets, magazines, and books published in the United States between 1787 and 1791, along with the official records of the state legislatures, executives, and ratifying conventions.

According to DHRC editor John P. Kaminski:

The writing and adoption of the Constitution were extraordinary historical events that continue to shape our daily lives, and this Ratification Series is for anyone who wants to better understand the Constitution in its historical context.

In 1987, historian Forrest McDonald described the DHRC as "a monumental undertaking," which was initially slow in its execution. McDonald was critical that the DHRC was "consuming half again as much space as it might and taking twice as long to be published as it should. "Nevertheless, McDonald conceded that when completed the DHRC will be "indispensable." As described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen, the DHRC "will be of enduring value centuries hence" and is "one of the most interesting documentary publications we have ever had." For Kammen, "[t]he intermingling of public and private documents" in the DHRC works "marvelously well":

We can compare the rhetoric designed to persuade with ruminations reflecting doubt or apprehension. We can compare assertions and predictions with what actually came to pass.

According to the DHRC's editor, "the placing of events and arguments in context—assisted by extensive cross references—should enable readers to see the relationships, sometimes the interplay, between the documents and the participants in the developing debate over the ratification of the Constitution. The record of this debate forms the greatest body of political writing in American history." Today, DHRC is routinely cited by historians, lawyers, judges and Supreme Court Justices.[2] Other documentary projects that are also available to researchers include The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790 and The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress.