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State Constitutions on the Road to the Constitution
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Welcome back to the museum! Before there was a U.S. Constitution, there were state constitutions, and two of the earliest reveal ideas that would later shape our national government. This video looks at New Jersey's 1776 Constitution and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, and the surprising ways each one experimented with rights and power.
As part of our Constitution Day Live programming, celebrating "Road to the Constitution," this video dives into how state constitutions like New Jersey's and Massachusetts's weren't just local documents. They were the first step toward shaping the nation, laying groundwork the framers would build on seven years later.
0:00 If you ask the average person to
0:01 identify the motto of the American
0:03 Revolution, they might be able to recite
0:05 that old classic, no taxation without
0:08 representation. We spend a lot of time
0:09 on that second word, taxation, and sure,
0:12 who likes taxes? But the fourth word of
0:14 the motto helps us understand why they
0:16 were so upset.
0:17 When they endorsed grievance 17, the
0:19 Continental Congress was expressing how
0:21 they were really upset over the issue of
0:23 representation. In the British Empire,
0:25 most people understood that Parliament
0:27 did not actually represent every one of
0:29 its subjects. In 1765, the English
0:32 politician Thomas Whately had explained
0:33 that all British subjects, in fact, were
0:35 virtually represented in Parliament
0:37 because every member of Parliament acted
0:39 in the best interest of the entire
0:41 empire, not on behalf of any individual
0:43 group of constituents. But this
0:45 explanation of virtual representation
0:47 just wasn’t good enough for Americans.
0:48 They were fine with taxes related to
0:50 trade because that was the accepted
0:52 responsibility of the Imperial
0:53 government, and they were fine with
0:55 paying taxes to their colonial
0:56 legislatures that had offered some form
0:58 of representation since the 17th
1:00 century. But when Parliament started
1:01 taxing them directly, they believed it
1:03 had gone too far.
1:05 Patriots like John Adams put it in stark
1:07 terms. Let it be known that British
1:09 liberties, like the right to
1:10 representation, were not the grants of
1:13 princes or parliaments, but original
1:15 rights to which all British subjects
1:17 were entitled. When Parliament imposed
1:19 taxes on colonists without their
1:20 approval, they went against a basic
1:22 enlightenment principle
1:24 that governed the English constitution.
1:27 As John Locke had put it, no one could
1:29 be subjected to the political power of
1:31 another without his own consent. No
1:33 taxation had been enough of a rallying
1:35 cry to get some people protesting in the
1:37 streets, but no representation in a
1:40 government supposedly built on English
1:41 liberty, that was enough of a
1:43 declaration to launch a revolution.
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