Jonathan Elliot (1784–1846) was a 19th-century

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

who produced two influential collections of documents connected with the early American republic. The first was a five-volume collection entitled ''The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution'' (commonly called ''Elliot's Debates''), which encompassed the time between the

1787 Constitutional Convention The Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787. Although the convention was intended to revise the league of states and first system of government under the Articles of Confederation, the intention f ...

and the opening of the government under the newly ratified constitution in 1789. This work for many years was the most complete source of primary material from this period. It was first published between 1827 and 1830, and issued in a revised version in 1861 after Elliot's death. It has long been criticized for its haphazard and biased editing, and it has been rendered obsolete by the ''Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, 1787-1791,'' launched in 1976 by the historian

Merrill Jensen Merrill Monroe Jensen (July 16, 1905 in Elk Horn, Iowa – January 30, 1980 in Madison, Wisconsin) was an American historian, whose research and writing focused on the ratification of the United States Constitution. His historical interpret ...

and continued by his students John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, Richard Leffler, and Charles Schoenleber. The second collection is the 1832 work ''The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and '99; with Jefferson's Original Draught Thereof. Also, Madison's Report, Calhoun's Address, Resolutions of the Several States in Relation to State Rights. With Other Documents in Support of the Jeffersonian Doctrines of '98.'' This book contained the

Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799 in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. The resolutions argued t ...

, the

Report of 1800 The Report of 1800 was a resolution drafted by James Madison arguing for the sovereignty of the individual states under the United States Constitution and against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Adopted by the Virginia General Assembly in January ...

, and other documents in support of the

states' rights In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the ...

position, which was at that time under fire due to the nullification crisis. As H. Jefferson Powell puts it, Elliot was more than "simply an assiduous gatherer of historical information about the Constitution: he was an active participant…in the constitutional debates of his day."Powell, 689.

References

* Powell, H. Jefferson. "The Principles of '98: An Essay in Historical Retrieval." ''Virginia Law Review'' 80 (1994): 689–743.

Notes

External links

*
Elliot's ''Debates''
at the Library of Congress {{DEFAULTSORT:Elliot, Jonathan American print editors 19th-century American historians 1784 births 1846 deaths