Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Constitutional Convention of Tennessee of 1796
On July 31st, 1797, Francis Baily, a young English traveler, then unknown to fame, but afterwards President of the Royal Astronomical Society, while stopping at the town of Nash ville, before starting on his fifteen days' overland journey through the Indian territory to Knoxville, after noting in his journal the recent formation of the State of Tennessee and the fact that the Governor had, in pursuance of the law, called a convention who lately met at Knoxville, (and) formed a Constitution, added, by way of comment, this foot note: All this sounds terrible in England, but is is a matter of course in America, after which digression he continued This Constitution breathes the true. Spirit of republicanism, and is formed much after the same manner as others, with all the improvements which time and experience have pointed out in the Science of legislation. (1) The Constitutional Convention thus referred to was that of 1796. I shall use Mr. Baily's commentaries as the text for the two salient features of that convention upon which it is my purpose to lay especial emphasis: First. The fact that while the holding of such a convention would indeed have been an extraordinary thing in England, with its unwritten constitution, it was, in America, a matter of course, and only one link in an orderly and legal chain of events; and second, that the Constitution thus formed was not in any sense a sudden and spontaneous creation, but was the natural outcome of those experiments in constitution-making with which its. Framers were acquainted, with such improvements as their own experience and the spirit of the times suggested.
Taking up then the first of these points, it will be necessary.
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