History of Pennsylvania - Statehood and Constitutional Government

Statehood and Constitutional Government

After elections in May 1776 returned old guard Assemblymen to office, the Second Continental Congress encouraged Pennsylvania to call delegates together to discuss a new form of governance. Delegates met in June in Philadelphia, where events (the signing of the Declaration of Independence) soon overtook assemblymen's efforts to control the delegates and the outcome of their discussions. On July 8 attendees elected delegates to write a state constitution. A Committee was formed with Benjamin Franklin as chair and George Bryan and James Cannon as prominent members. The convention proclaimed a new constitution on September 28, 1776 and called for new elections.

Elections in 1776 turned the old assemblymen out of power. But the new constitution lacked a governor or upper legislative house to provide checks against popular movements. It also required test oaths, which kept the opposition from taking office. The constitution called for a unicameral legislature or Assembly. Executive authority rested in a Supreme Executive Council whose members were to be appointed by the assembly. In elections during 1776, radicals gained control of the Assembly. By early 1777, they selected an executive council, and Thomas Wharton, Jr. was named as the President of the Council. This constitution was never formally adopted, so government was on an ad-hoc basis until a new constitution could be written fourteen years later.

In 1780 Pennsylvania passed a law for the gradual abolition of slavery; Vermont had abolished it in its constitution of 1777. Children born after that date to slave mothers were considered legally free, but they were bound in indentured servitude to the master of their mother until the age of 28. (Such indentures could be inherited and sold.) Gradually existing slaves were also freed, and the last slave was recorded in the state in 1847.

Pennsylvania ratified the U.S. Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so after Delaware. The state's name is spelled "Pensylvania" in the Constitution. A new state constitution was ratified in 1790.