The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States - Showing That It Is a Development of Progressive History and Not an Isolated Document Struck Off at a Given Time or an Imitation of English or Dutch Forms of Government #266958

Histories of the Constitution usually describe the labors of its framers in the Convention of 1787 and the contests of political parties over the adoption of the instrument by the requisite number of States in the following year, together with such changes or developments as have taken place since that time. The works which have touched on its sources or origin have treated it as invented by the convention which framed it, or have sought in England or other European countries for forms of government which were like it or might have suggested its various provisions.<br><br>Having for a long time been convinced that the Constitution is neither an invention nor an imitation, but almost exclusively a native product of slow and gradual growth, I have in this book undertaken to trace back, through previous American documents in colonial times, every material clause of it. These documents are very numerous, and consist of twenty-nine colonial charters and constitutions, seventeen Revolutionary constitutions, and twenty-three plans of union, - in all, sixty-nine different forms of government which were either in actual or in attempted operation in America during a period of about two hundred years, from 1584 to 1787.