Word: philadelphia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rights of man are as universal as Jefferson has said. Thomas Paine of the Pennsylvania Magazine has published an article arguing that the slave, "who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold." Adds Dr. Benjamin Rush, a leader of a Philadelphia antislavery movement: "The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature, that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery...
...most important of the new constitutions is that of Virginia, approved just last month. The proud Virginians had no thought of asking Congress for any advice. Indeed, they considered the work being undertaken in Williamsburg at least as important as that in Philadelphia. Said Thomas Jefferson: "Should a bad government be instituted for us, it had been as well to have accepted the bad one offered us from beyond the water without the risk and expense of contest...
Frustrated at not being able to take part in such debates, Virginia's Jefferson sat down in Philadelphia and wrote his own outline for a constitution, sending it back to Williamsburg with his mentor, Lawyer George Wythe. By the time Wythe got there, however, the many arguments over Mason's draft had finally been settled. Chairman Edmund Pendleton, a distinguished lawyer, said that the members "could not, from mere lassitude, have been induced to open the instrument again." But they did like Jefferson's preamble, which contains many of the same ideas that Jefferson has included...
...Pennsylvania, where conservatives dominated the Assembly and resisted all change, some 100 delegates from local Committees of Safety converged on Philadelphia last month and worked out rules for the election of a constitutional convention. That election was held early this week, and the radicals are now in control. But how they will translate that control into a constitution remains anyone's guess...
When Virginia's Richard Henry Lee rose in the State House in Philadelphia last month to move "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free," that celebrated statement was only the first section of a three-part resolution. The second section asked that the Colonies immediately "take the most effectual measures for forming foreign alliances". The third section urged that "a plan for confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation." That plan, TIME has learned, has just been finished, and a draft will be submitted to Congress late...