Adams also wrote an amplified statement of some of his views to John Penn, of North Carolina, which is given in John Taylor's Inquiry into the principles and policy of the Government of the United States (1814), and in Adams's Works, iv. 203.
The vote of Congress of May 15, 1776, had called upon the several colonies to provide for independent governments, and Jameson (Constitutional Conventions, N. Y., 1867, p. 112, etc.) summarizes the actions of the several States.[714] New Hampshire was the first to act, and Belknap in his New Hampshire, and the histories of the other States, tell the story of their procedures. South Carolina was the next, but Virginia was the earliest to form such a constitution that it could last for many years. On June 12, 1776, she adopted her famous Declaration of Rights, drawn by Geo. Mason,[715] and June 29th perfected her constitution.[716] For New Jersey, see L. Q. C. Elmer's Hist. of the Constitution adopted in 1776 and of the government under it (Newark, 1870, and in N. J. Hist. Soc. Proc., 2d ser., ii. 132), and the Journal and votes and Proceedings of the Convention of New Jersey (Burlington, 1776). For the movements in Pennsylvania, see Reed's Jos. Reed, i. ch. 7; the Proceedings relative to the calling of the Conventions of 1776 and 1790 (Harrisburg, 1825); Anna H. Wharton's "Thomas Wharton, first governor of Pennsylvania", in the Penna. Mag. of Hist., v. 426, vi. 91; and the biographies of the members of the convention in the Penna. Mag. of Hist., iii. and iv. The statements of the loyalist Jones in his New York during the Rev. (p. 321) are controverted by Johnston in his Observations (p. 41).
CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL'S DIARY.
A page from Christopher Marshall's diary, preserved in the Penna. Hist. Soc., giving his description of the public reading of the Declaration of Independence, in Philadelphia, on July 8th. Cf. Extracts from the diary of Christopher Marshall kept in Philadelphia and Lancaster during the American Revolution, 1774-1781, edited by Wm. Duane (Albany, 1877). On this reading, see Penna. Mag. of Hist., viii. 352, and W. Sargent's Loyal Verses of Stansbury and Odell, p. 116.
The English notion of the way in which the proclamation was made may be learned from Edward Bernard's contemporary folio Hist. of England (p. 689), where a large print represents an uncovered man on horseback reading a scroll to a crowd in the street, called "The manner in which the American Colonies declared themselves independent of the King of England throughout the different provinces on July 4, 1776." The reading took place in New York July 9th (Bancroft, ix. 36), and in Boston July 18th (Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 183). Moore's Diary of the Rev., i. (1776), records from contemporary journals the way in which it was received in various places. A letter of Major F. Barber in the New Jersey Hist. Soc. Proc., v., shows how the reception of the news was observed at Fort Stanwix.
For the convention in New York, see Debates of the N. Y. Conventions (1821), App., p. 691; Flanders's Life of Jay, ch. 8; and Sparks's Gouverneur Morris.[717] For Georgia, see C. C. Jones's Georgia, ii. ch. 13. Jameson (p. 138) outlines the peculiar circumstances of the early constitutional history of Vermont. Massachusetts was the last (1780) of the original States to frame a constitution. (See John Adams's Works, iv. 213; ix. 618.) Adams drafted the constitution presented by the committee, which was printed as Report of a Constitution or form of government,[718] and is printed without embodying the Errata in John Adams's Works (iv. 219), which copies it from the Appendix of the Journal of the Convention (Boston, 1832), where it was also printed in that defective manner.[719]
John Adams, in his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787,—in Works, iv. 271), set forth the views which influenced largely the framers of many of the constitutions of the States. Connecticut and Rhode Island retained their original charters through the war.