– 17 – A u g u s t 2 0 2 2 Important First Edition Set Of The Federal And State Debates On The Adoption Of The Constitution, 1827-30 18. (CONSTITUTION) ELLIOT, Jonathan, editor. The Debates, Resolutions, and other Proceedings, in Convention, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia, on the 17th of September, 1787: With the Yeas and Nays on the Decision of the Main Question. Washington, 1827-30. Four volumes. Octavo, contemporary full brown sheep. $6000. First edition of this “invaluable repository of facts and arguments… one of the most valuable collections relating to the Constitution” (ANB). When Jonathan Elliot, publisher of Washington’s first daily evening newspaper, City of Washington Gazette, turned toward scholarship, he “began the work for which he is still well known today, the publication of historical material. In 1827 he published the first volume of Debates, Resolutions, and Other Proceedings” (ANB). Volume I contains the Massachusetts & New York debates; II, the Virginia debates; III, North Carolina & Pennsylvania; and IV, the debates of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, with the text of the Constitution, “illustrated by the opinions of 20 successive congresses, and a digest of decisions.” The state debates are especially “full of fascinating material… Often acrimonious, they give a marvelously comprehensive picture of the dominant political and social ideas of the time and the characters of the men who enunciated them” (Smith, Constitution, 239). “The volumes remain the best source for materials about the national government’s transitional period between the closing of the Constitutional Convention in September 1787 and the opening of the First Federal Congress in March 1789… Elliot’s Debates collects the documents pertinent to the discussions on ratification” (Library of Congress). Text with scattered foxing, joints starting but sound. A very good copy, very scarce in contemporary sheep.
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