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 tell the Constitution's story. 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.[1] 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.[2]
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)[3] 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.[4]
With its first federal grant, the NHPC funded 23 initial projects, including The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.[5] 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."[6]
The DHRC editors realized the "extraordinary dimensions" of the project, as the process of ratifying the Constitution is "on a different order of magnitude from most other documentary history projects."[7]
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.[8][9]
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).Cite error: A <ref>
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(see the help page). 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.[10][11]
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."[12]
The decades long process of compiling and annotating these materials involved examination of manuscripts and other materials housed in "hundreds of libraries, archives, historical societies, private collections, auction-sale catalogs, and published primary sources to locate documents relating to the debate over the ratification of the Constitution." Additionally, the DHRC 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.[13]
According to 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.[14]
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.[15] "Nevertheless, McDonald conceded that when completed the DHRC will be "indispensable."[16]
The DHRC editors were aided by the work of colleagues who assembled The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790[17] and The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress.[18][19]
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.[20]
Kaminski likewise agrees that "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."[21] Today, DHRC is routinely cited by historians, lawyers, judges and Supreme Court Justices.
- ^ https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/Documenting_the_Constitution.pdf
- ^ https://www.archives.gov/about/history/milestones.html
- ^ https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2008-title44/html/USCODE-2008-title44.htm
- ^ https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/summer/nhprc.html
- ^ https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/summer/nhprc.html
- ^ https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/aboutus.htm
- ^ https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/Documenting_the_Constitution.pdf
- ^ https://www.lovewi.com/john-kaminski/
- ^ https://csac.history.wisc.edu/aboutus/
- ^ https://www.loc.gov/collections/century-of-lawmaking/articles-and-essays/continental-congress/elliots-debates/#:~:text=Elliot%27s%20Debates%20collects%20the%20documents,debates%20in%20the%20various%20states
- ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Elliot_(historian)
- ^ 24. https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/Documenting_the_Constitution.pdf
- ^ https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/Documenting_the_Constitution.pdf
- ^ https://www.lovewi.com/john-kaminski/
- ^ https://www.jstor.org/stable/1939785
- ^ https://www.jstor.org/stable/1939785
- ^ Merrill M. Jensen, Robert A. Becker, and Gordon denBoer, eds., The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790, 4 vols. (Madison, Wis., 1976–90).
- ^ Linda Grant DePauw et al., eds., 'The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America, March 4, 1789–March 3, 1791', 17 vols. (Baltimore, 1972– )
- ^ https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.69.2.0377
- ^ https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/Documenting_the_Constitution.pdf
- ^ https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/Documenting_the_Constitution.pdf