Transcriber's Note:
Multiple-page footnotes, repositioned to the end of the text,have resulted in numbered pages with no contents (visible in htmlversion only).
Remaining transcriber's notes are at the end of the text.
HISTORY

OF THE

ORIGIN, FORMATION, AND ADOPTION

OF THE

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES;

WITH

NOTICES OF ITS PRINCIPAL FRAMERS.
BY

GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOLUME I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER AND BROTHERS,
Franklin Square.
1854.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
GEORGE T. CURTIS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts
TO

GEORGE TICKNOR, Esq.,

THE HISTORIAN OF SPANISH LITERATURE,

BY WHOSE ACCURATE SCHOLARSHIP AND CAREFUL CRITICISM
THESE PAGES HAVE LARGELY PROFITED,

I DEDICATE THIS WORK,

IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF TIES,
WHICH HAVE BEEN TO ME CONSTANT SOURCES OF HAPPINESS
THROUGH MY WHOLE LIFE.
[v]
PREFACE.
A special history of the origin and establishment of the Constitution ofthe United States has not yet found a place in our national literature.
Many years ago, I formed the design of writing such a work, for thepurpose of exhibiting the deep causes which at once rendered theConvention of 1787 inevitable, and controlled or directed its course anddecisions; the mode in which its great work was accomplished; and thefoundations on which our national liberty and prosperity were thendeliberately settled by the statesmen to whom the American Revolutiongave birth, and on which they have rested ever since.
In the prosecution of this purpose I had, until death terminated hisearthly interests, the encouragement and countenance of that illustriousperson, whose relation to the Constitution of the United States, duringthe last forty years, has been not[vi] inferior in importance to that ofany of its founders during the preceding period.
Mr. Webster had for a long time the intention of writing a work whichshould display the remarkable state of affairs under whose influence theConstitution was first brought into practical application; and thisdesign he relinquished only when all the remaining plans of his lifewere surrendered with the solemn and religious resignation that markedits close. It was known to him that I had begun to labor upon anotherbranch of the same subject. In the spring of 1852 I wrote to him toexplain the plan of my work, and to ask him for a copy of some remarksmade by his father in the Convention of New Hampshire when theConstitution was ratified by that State. I received from him thefollowing answer.
"Washington, March 7th, [1852].
"My Dear Sir,—
"I will try to find for you my father's speech,as it was collected from tradition and publishedsome years ago. If I live to see warm weather inMarshfield, I shall be glad to see you beneath itsshades, and to talk of your book.
"You are probably aware that I have meditatedthe writing of something upon the History of theConstitution and the Administration of Washington.[vii]...
                        
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