History
An earlier draft by the Massachusetts General Court was rejected by the people due to lack of public participation. Subsequently, in the summer of 1779, delegates were elected to a constitutional convention, which met in Cambridge in September 1779. The convention chose a committee of thirty members to prepare a new constitution and declaration of rights.
To write a new constitution, the committee of thirty members appointed a subcommittee consisting of James Bowdoin, Samuel Adams, and John Adams. That subcommittee in turn assigned the task of preparing a first draft to John Adams alone, a "sub-sub committee of one," as Adams later referred to it. For the new declaration of rights, the committee of thirty members assigned the drafting directly to John Adams. However, the article on religion was referred to clergy. Perhaps the most famous line in Adams's draft declaration of rights was this: "All men are born equally free and independent...." This was slightly revised before being adopted by the constitutional convention: "All men are born free and equal...."
Male voters 21 years or older ratified the constitution, including the declaration of rights, that was proposed by the convention. At the insistence of John Adams, the document referred to the state as a "commonwealth."
Read more about this topic: Massachusetts Constitution
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)