Volume 4, Chapter 46, Radicalism Triumphs in Pennsylvania.
Certainly the most exciting political event in the years after the Declaration of Independence was the triumph of the radicals in the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776.
Pennsylvania's proprietary status had allowed its colonial assembly to retain its dominance even after war began.
Its conservative opposition to independence then forced the independence movement to polarize into a truly radical opposition.
In the Provincial Conference of June 1776, this opposition had created a dual government in scornful defiance of the Morbund Assembly and had declared independence.
Conference.
The conference organized a provincial convention to frame a new constitution for Pennsylvania,
and this convention was weighted heavily in favor of representation from the West, in
contrast to the previous weighting in favor of the East.
It also greatly broadened the suffrage, giving the vote to all tax-paying adult military
The Pennsylvania Convention, which met on July 17, 1776, was heavily dominated by the
radicals from Philadelphia and from the West.
Benjamin Franklin was named President of the Convention, but he was well content to serve
as figurehead and took no interest in state politics at the time, preferring to work with
with the Conservatives on the national scene.
The major drafters of the Pennsylvania Constitution were the libertarian professor James Cannon
of Philadelphia College, his fellow Philadelphia mathematician David Rittenhouse, and the leader
of the Philadelphia Mechanics, Timothy Matlack.
Not delegates to the convention, but highly influential behind the scenes were Dr. Thomas
Thomas Young, formerly of Massachusetts, an ideological mentor of Ethan Allen, and Philadelphia merchant and jurist George Bryan.
The mass of the delegates were far more broadly based than American legislators had ever been.
Instead of dutifully electing their betters to office, the masses from among farmers and artisans had risen up to elect delegates of their own.
In the Pennsylvania Constitution, the radical leadership and their new mass base created a remarkably democratic instrument which quickly became the object of hate and alarm among conservatives of every stamp throughout the country.
Its essence was the radical's realization that the inevitable thrust of despotism comes from entrenched oligarchy, and that therefore liberty is best assured by checking and scotching that oligarchy before it has a chance to grow.
Conservative urgings of bicameralism were swept aside and a single house legislature created with no oligarchical upper house allowed.
Executive tyranny was checked in advance by creating a plural executive, a council elected in rotation and removable at any time by the elected assembly.
The president of this council, elected by joint vote of council and assembly, was only the presiding officer of the council, with no real executive power.
Furthermore, the council itself was strictly subordinate to the assembly and had no veto power over legislation.
Plural office holding was totally forbidden.
Judicial despotism was prevented by making the Supreme Court judges not life judges, guaranteed tenure on good behavior, but elected by the Council for seven-year terms and removable by the Assembly at any time for misbehavior.
Military despotism was checked by allowing the State militia to select its own officers of Colonel and Below, hire officers to be selected by the Assembly.
Cannon and his Philadelphia Committee of Privates lost their fight, however, to make all militia officers electable by their men.
Contrary to many interpretations of the Pennsylvania Constitution, the aim of the Framers was not to erect unchecked rule by the One House Legislature.
On the contrary, its power was also to be severely checked in advance.
Thus, state government tyranny over local affairs was prevented by making all local
officials elected by their local community, and no bill was to become law unless passed
by two successive assemblies, so as to test the popular will before any measure could
be finally passed.
To ensure rotation in office as a check upon entrenched power, representatives in the assembly
An especially interesting check upon the legislature was to be a council of censors whose job would be to meet every seven years to examine whether any part of government had exceeded its constitutional power, that is to function perhaps as a kind of judicial review, and to call a new constitutional convention to amend the old.
The Constitutional suffrage continued a long line similar to the voting for the Convention itself.
Suffrage was broadened by extending it to all patriotic taxpayers and sons of freeholders.
While over-representation of the West was to continue for two years,
the Constitution recognized that representation in proportion to the number of voters,
is the only principle which can secure liberty, and thus dared to undercut the radical voting base itself on behalf of a radical principle, establishing such proportional representation by 1778.
One undemocratic feature confined to the freeholders the nomination of two choices for each post of Justice of the Peace, Sheriff and Coroner, one of whom would be chosen by the State Council.
The Constitution makers inserted, again over canon's objections, a Christian oath for holding office, an oath that unusually allowed Roman Catholics to accept office.
Two particularly libertarian clauses in the Constitution were the abolition of imprisonment for debt, except in cases of fraud, and the allowing of the right to vote to all foreigners resident more than a year in the state, which served to enfranchise many German immigrants.
Excessive bail was prohibited, and punishments were to be reduced to become more proportionate
to the crimes. In addition, jails were to be made places of force to labor, where the
criminals could be made to work, partially to repair the injuries they had committed.
Perpetual entails of estates, an ancient feudal abuse of property, were prohibited and a free
The Pennsylvania Constitution also included a comprehensive declaration, or Bill of Rights.
This included the bulk of the Model Virginia Bill of Rights, for example, Natural Rights,
Power in the People, Right of Abolition of Government, Right of Jury Trial, Liberty Accepted
by Process of Law, Prohibition of General Warrants, and Prohibition of Standing Armies.
To these, Pennsylvania added many other highly libertarian clauses.
One held that all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God, according
to the dictates of their own consciences, and that, therefore, there must be no compulsory
religious establishment or abridgment of rights on account of religion, in short, full freedom
of religion.
A second stated that the people have a right to freedom of speech and of writing and publishing
their sentiments, therefore the freedom of press ought not to be restrained.
A third clause asserted the natural inherent right of all men to emigrate to a state that
will receive them or to form a new state on vacant lands.
Another article upheld the right of the people to assemble and to a petition for redress
A potentially sweeping libertarian clause held that every member of society hath a right to be protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property.
But inconsistently drew from that the qualifying non sequitur that he therefore is bound to contribute his proportion toward the expense of that protection.
The Bill of Rights also upheld, in this state with a long-time pacifist tradition, the right of conscientious objection to bearing arms upon payment of compensation.
Some of the members of the Convention toyed with the idea of a vague clause criticizing concentration of property in the hands of a few, but this egalitarian clause was stricken from the final draft.
Professor Douglas, in his illuminating work on political controversies in the revolutionary period, lays stress on this clause as evidence of a certain New Deal orientation in the assembly.
But surely the important point is that this admittedly radical dominated convention rejected this clause in the Constitution.
The highly liberal and democratic Pennsylvania Constitution promulgated on September 28, 1776 proved to be a beacon and inspiration to libertarians and a scourge to the conservatives throughout America.
The absence of an upper house greatly angered John Adams and Benjamin Rush, who was pushed rightward by the Constitution.
Most resistant was the bulk of the wealthy and the well-born, reluctant to give up their old privileges.
As one contemporary opponent of the Constitution frankly put it,
Must gentlemen, who have ruled society for a century past, be trampled down to the level of common mechanics in an instant, and be obliged to consult their cumours?
Dr. William Shippen, a member of one of Philadelphia's leading families, wryly wrote of the frenzied opposition,
I don't wonder to see more of our friends offended and full of resentment upon the change who have been heretofore at the head of affairs,
In short, have in many instances behaved as though they thought they had a sort of fee simple in them and might dispose of all places of honor and profit as pleased them best, now to be ousted or at least brought down to a level with their fellow citizens.
The main point of attack seized upon by the Conservatives and by historians since was the Convention's insistence upon prescribing a test oath of loyalty to the Constitution and the new government by all Pennsylvania voters.
The Convention also raised revenue by levying fines on non-associators and decreed that justices of the peace could seize and hold indefinitely, without trial or habeas corpus, anyone speaking or writing against measures of the United States.
While pointing to invasions of liberty by liberty's proclaimed champions was certainly a neat debater's trick, it was superficial and actually proved little.
In the first place, the point was cynically demagogic as the conservatives cared precious little for liberty.
But more than this, it must be emphasized that invasions of liberty, particularly the liberty of Tories, were growing apace throughout the country.
The Pennsylvania test oath was part of this nationwide crackdown, a crackdown here occurring in a state riddled with Tories and Tory sympathizers.
While the oath was certainly deplorable and inconsistent with liberty, it is impermissible
to equate mechanically the systematic invasions of liberty by despotic regime with the sporadic
excesses growing out of a radical revolution's desperate attempt to install a liberal regime
against the opposition of its mortal enemies.
The wealthy and therefore the educated men of Pennsylvania and hence the bulk of the
lawyers opposed the Constitution, which was defended by the radical theoreticians and supported
by the mass of Western farmers and by many urban artisans.
The right, unwilling to accept defeat, rapidly formed an anti-constitutionalist party dedicated
to framing a new constitution, while the radical defenders of the new regime became
the constitutionalists. The anti-constitutionalists organized a large meeting in Philadelphia
in mid-October, which passed numerous resolutions against the constitution. These critics of
libertarians tipped their philosophical hand by calling for the separation of powers as
taught by the reactionary Baron de Montesquieu, and also for more stringent religious tests
for voting.
A large Philadelphia mass meeting a few days later ratified these resolves over the opposition
of Young, Matlack and Cannon.
But the Philadelphia dissenters found their way totally blocked in the hinterland.
The committees of Cumberland and Chester counties rejected the Philadelphia Resolves and no
county meeting unqualifiedly endorsed them.
In November elections, while electing anti-constitutionalists from the city and county of Philadelphia,
placed the constitutionalists in firm control of the Assembly.
But the anti-constitutionalist, led by John Dickinson, tried to wreck the assembly by
staying away from the sessions and preventing a quorum.
The radicals, however, simply and effectively held new elections for the post of the absent
members, and by March 1777, growing constitutionalist strength gave them a quorum.
The assembly under the Pennsylvania Constitution was firmly in radical hands.
The conservatives, however, refused to relax their fight.
In county after county, they would not serve in public office.
And as in Bedford County, conservative county clerks refused to surrender official records
to their successors.
Lawyers would not practice in the courts.
Rightists rioted in Lancaster and other counties.
The increasingly rightist agitation was being led by James Wilson from Philadelphia.
To counter the agitation, the Philadelphia radicals, led by the young artist Charles Wilson Peale,
formed a Whig Society and a committee of correspondents consisting of Peale, Young, Cannon, Rittenhouse and Thomas Paine,
who brought his powerful pen to the defense of the Constitution.
Amidst the war crisis, Congress presumed to step in and grant power to Pennsylvania's
executive officials, and the right mounted a crescendo of propaganda for new constitutional
convention. This plan was foiled by the crisis precipitated by General Howe's advance on
Philadelphia in July 1777, when all constitutional questions were postponed. The thwarting of
The rightist plans by the British advance was, in a sense, poetic justice, for this campaign by the right against the Constitution played into the hands of the numerous Pennsylvania Tories and greatly weakened the state's role in the Revolutionary War.
To try and throw off the stigma of Toryism, the anti-constitutionalist party began to call themselves Republicans.
In contrast to the conservatives, the radicals in control of the assembly showed themselves paragons of magnanimity, reaching the point of madcap generosity.
Thus their arch enemies, Robert Morris and James Wilson, were retained as delegates to Congress, and they chose the now determined conservative Joseph Reed as first Chief Justice of the State,
only to have him refuse brusquely as part of the withdrawal drive to scrap the Constitution.
After Reed declined, the post was offered to the anti-constitutionalist Thomas McKean, who was opportunistic enough to accept it.
Finally, the Radicals chose the moderate conservative, Thomas Wharton of the Indiana Company, to be the first President of the Pennsylvania Council.
When Wharton died in the spring of 1778, moreover, the radicals offered this important post to Reid.
This offer finally pricked his opportunism and persuaded him to desert the bitter end opponents of the Constitution.