The Hillsborough Convention, was the first of two North Carolina conventions to ratify the United States Constitution. Delegates represented 7 boroughs and 59 counties, including six western counties that became part of Tennessee when it was created in 1796. They met in Hillsborough, North Carolina from July 21 to August 4, 1788 to deliberate and determine whether to ratify the Constitution recommended to the states by the General Convention that had been held in Philadelphia the previous summer. The delegates had won their seats through special elections held in March 1788, as mandated by the North Carolina General Assembly. [1] Governor Samuel Johnston presided over the Convention. [2] The Hillsborough Convention was dominated by anti-Federalists, and North Carolina did not ratify the Constitution until the Fayetteville Convention, which met a year later.
The convention was held in Hillsborough, North Carolina, at the St. Matthew's Episcopal (Church of England) Church. The church was located on lot 98 in Hillsborough. It was also the location of the third Provincial Congress of North Carolina of 1775 and the meeting place of the North Carolina Legislature in 1778, 1782 and 1783. The church was destroyed by fire before 1800s. A new structure was built on the site in 1814 and became the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church in 1816. [3] [4] [5]
Key state Federalists were James Iredell Sr., William Richardson Davie, and William Blount. Anti-Federalist leaders included Willie Jones, Samuel Spencer, and Timothy Bloodworth. The Anti-Federalist delegates outnumbered their Federalist colleagues by a margin of two to one. The Federalists wanted to strengthen the powers of the federal government to help the country keep from dissolving. They argued that the powers granted to the federal government in the Articles of Confederation were not sufficient. On the other side, the Anti-Federalists were suspicious of the federal government and did not want self-rule to come under fire from a government that could intrude on state and individual rights. Knowing that they would likely lose, members of the Federalist minority brought a stenographer to the convention to record their arguments for publication in the hopes of changing public opinion in the future. [6]
The debate resulted in the delegates voting 184 to 84 to neither ratify nor reject the Constitution. One of the major reasons for North Carolina not ratifying the Constitution was its lack of a Bill of Rights. The delegates, however, proposed a series of amendments to personal liberties and urged the new federal Congress to adopt measures to incorporate a bill of rights into the Constitution. [7] North Carolina would not join the Union until after it ratified the Constitution, more than a year later, at the November 1789 Fayetteville Convention. [8] [9] [10] [11]
There were 294 known delegates from the 59 counties and seven boroughs of North Carolina. Some counties (Greene, Sullivan, Sumner, Tennessee, Washington) later became part of the state of Tennessee in 1796. [12] [13] The election of delegates from Dobbs County was declared invalid because of violence that led to the loss of the ballot box. [14] [15]
Governor Samuel Johnston was the President of the Convention. While his home was in Chowan County, he represented Perquimans County in the Convention. John Hunt was the secretary and James Taylor was the assistant secretary of the Convention. The doorkeepers of the convention were William Murfree, Peter Gooding, Nicholas Murfree, and James Mulloy. [15]
The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution places restrictions on the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent, forbidding the practice in peacetime. The amendment is a response to the Quartering Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain during the buildup to the American Revolutionary War, which had allowed the British Army to lodge soldiers in public buildings.
William Blount was an American politician, landowner and Founding Father who was one of the signers of the Constitution of the United States. He was a member of the North Carolina delegation at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and led the efforts for North Carolina to ratify the Constitution in 1789 at the Fayetteville Convention. He then served as the only governor of the Southwest Territory and played a leading role in helping the territory gain admission to the union as the state of Tennessee. He was selected as one of Tennessee's initial United States Senators in 1796, serving until he was expelled for treason in 1797.
Anti-Federalism was a late-18th-century political movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the 1787 Constitution. The previous constitution, called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, gave state governments more authority. Led by Patrick Henry of Virginia, Anti-Federalists worried, among other things, that the position of president, then a novelty, might evolve into a monarchy. Though the Constitution was ratified and supplanted the Articles of Confederation, Anti-Federalist influence helped lead to the passage of the Bill of Rights.
Dobbs County, North Carolina was a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina.
Richard Dobbs Spaight was an American Founding Father, politician, planter, and signer of the United States Constitution, who served as a Democratic-Republican U.S. Representative for North Carolina's 10th congressional district from 1798 to 1801. Spaight was the eighth governor of North Carolina from 1792 to 1795. He ran for the North Carolina Senate in 1802, and Federalist U.S. Congressman John Stanly campaigned against him as unworthy. Taking offense, Stanly challenged him to a duel on September 5, 1802, in which Stanly shot and mortally wounded Spaight, who died the following day.
Alexander Martin was a Founding Father of the United States, framer of the U.S. Constitution, fourth and seventh Governor of North Carolina, and an infantry officer in the American Revolutionary War. In private life, Martin was a lawyer, merchant, planter, and slave owner.
John Steele was a planter, Federalist legislator, comptroller of the U.S. Treasury, and member of the United States House of Representatives from the state of North Carolina between 1790 and 1793.
William Barry Grove was a Federalist U.S. Congressman from the state of North Carolina from 1791 to 1803.
Alexander Mebane, Jr. was a U.S. Congressman from the state of North Carolina from 1793 to 1795. He was also a brigadier general in the North Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War.
Whitmell Hill was an American planter from Martin County, North Carolina and commander of the Martin County Regiment of the North Carolina militia during the American Revolution. He was a delegate for North Carolina to the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1780 and served as Speaker of the North Carolina House of Commons in 1778.
Willie Jones was an American planter and statesman from Halifax County, North Carolina. He represented North Carolina as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1780. His brother Allen Jones was also a delegate to the congress.
Anti-Federalist Papers is the collective name given to the works written by the Founding Fathers who were opposed to, or concerned with, the merits of the United States Constitution of 1787. Starting on 25 September 1787 and running through the early 1790s, these Anti-Federalists published a series of essays arguing against the ratification of the new Constitution. They argued against the implementation of a stronger federal government without protections on certain rights. The Anti-Federalist papers failed to halt the ratification of the Constitution but they succeeded in influencing the first assembly of the United States Congress to draft the Bill of Rights. These works were authored primarily by anonymous contributors using pseudonyms such as "Brutus" and the "Federal Farmer." Unlike the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists created their works as part of an unorganized group.
The Virginia Ratifying Convention was a convention of 168 delegates from Virginia who met in 1788 to ratify or reject the United States Constitution, which had been drafted at the Philadelphia Convention the previous year.
The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or the people. The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those in earlier documents, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), as well as the Northwest Ordinance (1787), the English Bill of Rights (1689), and Magna Carta (1215).
The North Carolina Provincial Congresses were extra-legal unicameral legislative bodies formed in 1774 through 1776 by the people of the Province of North Carolina, independent of the British colonial government. There were five congresses. They met in the towns of New Bern, Hillsborough (3rd), and Halifax. The 4th conference approved the Halifax Resolves, the first resolution of one of Thirteen Colonies to call for independence from Great Britain. Five months later it would empower the state's delegates to the Second Continental Congress to concur to the United States Declaration of Independence. The 5th conference approved the Constitution of North Carolina and elected Richard Caswell as governor of the State of North Carolina. After the 5th conference, the new North Carolina General Assembly met in April 1777.
The drafting of the Constitution of the United States began on May 25, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention met for the first time with a quorum at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to revise the Articles of Confederation. It ended on September 17, 1787, the day the Frame of Government drafted by the convention's delegates to replace the Articles was adopted and signed. The ratification process for the Constitution began that day, and ended when the final state, Rhode Island, ratified it on May 29, 1790.
The Country Party was a political party in Rhode Island in the Confederation and early Federal periods, from about March 1781 until the death in office of its leader, Governor Arthur Fenner, in October 1805. At its peak of influence, it controlled the Rhode Island General Assembly and dominated state politics from 1785 to 1790. A stridently Anti-Federalist party, it was instrumental in resisting ratification of the Constitution and was the organized vehicle for political expression of popular views that led to Rhode Island both disrupting consensus among states under the Articles of Confederation and being the last of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution.
Thomas Person (1733–1800) was an American politician, Anti-Federalist organizer, and brigadier general in command of the Hillsborough District Brigade of the North Carolina militia during the American Revolution.
The Fayetteville Convention was a meeting by 271 delegates from North Carolina to ratify the US Constitution. Governor Samuel Johnston presided over the convention, which met in Fayetteville, North Carolina, from November 16 to 23, 1789 to debate on and decide on the ratification of the Constitution, which had recommended to the states by the Philadelphia Convention during the summer of 1787. The delegates ratified the Constitution by a vote of 194 to 77, thus making North Carolina the 12th state to ratify the constitution.
The North Carolina General Assembly of October 1784 met in New Bern from October 25, 1784 to November 26, 1784. The assembly consisted of the 116 members of the North Carolina House of Commons and 55 senators of North Carolina Senate elected by the voters on August 20, 1784. As prescribed by the 1776 Constitution of North Carolina the General Assembly elected Richard Caswell as Governor of North Carolina and members of the Council of State.
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