"Constitutional Convention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flourished with increasing vigor in the South, until, in the War of the Rebellion, Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation put an end forever to slavery in America. When the builders of our Government met in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, slavery was a problem which more than once threatened to wreck the scheme for an indissoluble union of the States. But it was compromised under a suggestion implied in the Constitution itself, that slavery should not be checked in the ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... of those, as Dr. Hale says, "who preached sermons when young men went out to fight the French, and preached sermons again in memory of their death when they had been slain in battle." The grandfather was John Lowell, a member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts in 1780. It was he who introduced into the Bill of Rights a phrase from the Bill of Rights of Virginia, "All men are created free and equal," with the purpose which it effected of setting free every man then held as a slave in Massachusetts. A son of John Lowell and ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... strong measures, and expressed its hearty approval. Soon afterwards the convention adjourned, after providing for the calling of a new convention, to consist of five delegates from each county, who should give a name to the state, and prepare for it a constitution. The members of this constitutional convention were to be chosen by counties, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... was in Salt Lake City as a member of the constitutional convention, the next winter, Young treated him, at his house and elsewhere, with all the friendliness of old. No one conversant with the extent of Young's authority will doubt the correctness of Lee's statement that "if Brigham Young had wanted one man or fifty men or five hundred men arrested, all he would ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... audience of my main argument; Mr. Conkling elected. Difficulties between Judge Folger and myself; question as to testimony in criminal cases; Judge Folger's view of it; his vexation at my obtaining a majority against him. Calling of the Constitutional Convention, Judge Folger's candidacy for its Presidency; curious reason for Horace Greeley's opposition to him. Another cause of separation between Judge Folger and myself. Defeat of the Sodus Canal Bill. Constitutional Convention eminent ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... characteristic speech of Senator Tillman delivered in the recent South Carolina Constitutional Convention, in which he arraigned the financial legislation of Reconstruction in that State Mr. Thomas E. Miller, one of the six Negro ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... elected a workingman mayor of San Francisco, joined forces with the Grangers, and elected a majority of the members of the state constitutional convention which met in Sacramento on September 28, 1878. This was a notable triumph for a third party. The framing of a new constitution gave this coalition of farmers and workingmen an unusual opportunity to assail the evils which they ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... several American ports and the coast of Africa, Gibraltar, and England,—familiarly known as the "Ebony Line,"—has been strongly recommended to Congress by petitions from all quarters. The Legislature of Virginia, and the Constitutional Convention of the same State, now in session, have both passed resolutions in its favor. Several other States have done, or are about to do the same thing. The session is already so far advanced, however, that the subject will probably be left without ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... remained there for one year; removed, at the breaking out of the war, to Brooklyn, New York, where he was a pastor for four years; was sent by his Church as a missionary to the freedmen in South Carolina; was chosen a member of the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina; was elected a member of the State Senate from Charleston, and served two years; took charge of a republican newspaper in 1868; was elected a representative from South Carolina in the Forty-third Congress as a Republican, receiving 66,825 ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... This Constitutional Convention was in session a number of months; its delegates were partially elected by women's votes, as at that date women were exercising their right of self-government through voting, certainly in the States of Massachusetts and New Jersey, if not in Georgia and Delaware. These ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... and, more in detail, the attitude of the planting, farming, and trading groups of colonies toward the slave-trade. It deals next with the first concerted effort against the trade and with the further action of the individual States. The important work of the Constitutional Convention follows, together with the history of the trade in that critical period which preceded the Act of 1807. The attempt to suppress the trade from 1807 to 1830 is next recounted. A chapter then deals with the slave-trade as ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of his office. He opened the extra session with an appropriate message. The extra session adjourned on the 23d of May, and in accordance with the provisions of the enabling act of congress, an election was held on the first Monday in June for delegates to a constitutional convention, which was to assemble at the capitol on the second Monday in July. The constitutional convention is an event in the history of Minnesota sufficiently important and unique to entitle it to special treatment, which ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Tite W. Peebles, delegate to the California Constitutional Convention, Sacramento, to Messrs. Pixley and Sutton, 98 California Street, San ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... in front of the court house that the Constitution of the State was proclaimed by Robert Berrian, the secretary of the Constitutional Convention, and it was there that George Clinton, the first Governor of the State, was inaugurated and took the oath of office. It was in the court house that John Jay, chief justice, delivered his memorable charge to the grand jury in September, 1777, and at the opening said: ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... constitution of her own making. In May, 1877, an election was held to determine the question, and in spite of considerable opposition, even in the Democratic party, the people decided, by nine thousand majority, to have a constitutional convention. ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... independence. Among those who rose to eminence in the immortal eighth decade was Samuel Alleyne Otis, who in 1776 was elected a representative in the great Congress of the Revolution. James did not live to see his brother become speaker of the House, but he witnessed in 1780 his service as a member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts. Afterward, in 1787, he was a commissioner to negotiate a settlement with the participants in Shay's Rebellion. With the organization of the new national government he became Secretary of the Senate of the United States, and served in that capacity until ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... began and continued. Corruption in Ohio was so notorious that it formed a bitter part of the discussion in the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1850-51. The delegates were droning along over insertions devised to increase corporation power. Suddenly rose Delegate Charles Reemelin and exclaimed: "Corporations always have their lobby members in and around the halls of legislation to watch and secure their interests. Not so with ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... whole people can not assemble in one place to frame and adopt a constitution, they elect delegates to a constitutional convention. The convention usually meets at the capital, deliberates, frames articles for a proposed constitution, and in nearly all cases submits them to the people. The people make known their will in a general election, and if a majority vote in favor of adopting the proposed constitution, ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... Bolvar ordered the cessation of conscription and called a constitutional convention ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... Robert J. Walker, a slaveholder, whom Buchanan and Douglas had persuaded to accept the governorship, reported that the Free-Soilers outnumbered their adversaries three to one. The legislature had provided for the election of delegates to a constitutional convention, and when the question of submitting the constitution to the people arose, the governor, an upright man, promptly announced that it would be submitted, and the administration sustained him. Many Free-Soilers, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown |
