Revolutionary Moment #2: Virginia Ratifies the U.S. Constitution, June 25, 1788
After successive recommendations by the Constitutional Convention and the newly-established Confederation Congress, a proposed United States Constitution was sent to all thirteen states on Sep 28, 1787, for review and ratification.
The hit musical “Hamilton,” and two centuries of books published for schoolchildren, scholars and popular audiences, have tended to describe that history with the inevitability of hindsight. However, nine of those 13 stillcontentious states would need to approve the document, before it could take legal effect. Final, unanimous ratification wouldn’t come until Rhode Island signed in 1790. A Bill of Rights would be added in 1791, with more than two hundred years needed to establish the 27 Amendments we live with today.
But in the summer of 1787, George Washington now had work to do back at home. He quickly set to writing other Virginians known to be skeptical of his fellow Federalists’ proposals to anchor a stronger central government. Two colleagues Washington addressed were long-respected state leaders who’d expressed resistance to the plan: Patrick Henry and Thomas Nelson.
Tellingly, given Virginians’ broad, regional disagreements about the Constitution’s drafted terms, the five named streets in Lexington’s first 1778 town plan already signaled the political diversity of an emerging state and nation. Somewhat ironically, a decade later, Henry and Nelson Streets would seem to be “out-flanking” Washington, while another pair of “Founding Fathers” crossed that central grid, in turn: Thomas Jefferson (Minister to France at the time, and a characteristically canny correspondent on constitutional affairs) and the late Peyton Randolph.
Peyton was twice elected as President of the Continental Congress. His nephew, Edmund Randolph, served as governor during Virginia’s Ratifying Convention, followed by Edmund’s cousin Beverley, from 1788 to 1791. Both ultimately supported Federalist principles, which would be further established Washington’s presidency from 17891797.
During Virginia’s month-long Ratifying Convention – and supported by many delegates across the state – George Mason and Patrick Henry insistently stood against adoption, respectively calling for a Bill of Rights, and more strongly-affirmed states’ rights (among them, the right to preserve slavery). Nevertheless, four days after New Hampshire’s ninth-state ratification formally legalized the Constitution, Virginia approved the nation’s founding document in a very close 89-79 vote on June 25, 1788, exactly 237 years ago today. The two delegates representing Rockbridge, both voting on the winning side, were Revolutionary War officers: Capt. Andrew Moore and Col. William McKee.
Virginia had previously passed its inaugural state constitution on June 29, 1776, but six other significantly-revised versions would follow. They, too, would vary strikingly in both extending and retracting the rights of Virginia’s citizens: in 1803, 1851, 1868, 1902, 1928, and 1971, the version that still holds today.
