the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.nHeld in the Year of 1788, and Which Finally Ratified thenConstitution of the United States, which was printed innBoston according to the will of the state legislature and bynWilliam White, Printer to the Commonwealth. I have,nthanks to friends in New England, the pleasure of owning ancopy of this unusual and uniquely valuable book. From andistant and Southern perspective, I have found the versionsnof the ratification story contained in it to be of specialninterest to the close student of the regional origins ofnAmerican politics: a window on the sources of our persistentnand ultimately admirable national variety. But to understandnthe action preserved in its pages, the distinctive NewnEngland coloring of the event recorded there, it is annecessary predicate for other exegeses that we first reconstructnthe milieu in which it occurred, reassemble thencontext of circumstance within which it was played out, andnthe universe of discourse in the language of which it isnpreserved for our examination.nThere is available a substantial body of commentarynaccounting for the details and the dynamic of the Massachusettsnconvention itself and of the history antecedent tonits gathering in the close quarters of Mr. Moorehead’snMeeting House on Milk Street—especially the growingndiscontent which spread across Massachusetts during thensummer and fall of 1786 and then exploded in December ofnthat year in the insurrection which we now call Shays’nRebellion.nWhat we discover, first of all, from a familiarity with thenscholarship, is that the community of the Saints had its ownnideas concerning what the new Constitution would mean tonthe children of the Covenant, what might be said against itnor in its behalf And this version, 1 shall explain, is innimportant ways unlike the Constitution spoken of in thenstates to the south and west of New England—even thoughnthe words approved are the same. Part of the reason for thisnuniqueness is, to be sure, that Shays’ Rebellion went on innMassachusetts, ending only in February of 1787 at Petershamnand Sheffield. Another essentially local influence onnthe politics of ratification was Massachusetts’ exceptionalnapproach to the retirement of state debt—and to the failurenof its citizens to pay their taxes levied for that purpose: anmoral and political attitude, rooted in its Calvinist origins.nBut in the end even the disturbance of the courts andntaxpayers’ revolt acquires much of its resonance because itnoccurred in the Citadel of the Elect, the Protestant Zion—namong a people called out to the special and collectivenservice of God and to the building of His Kingdom in thenWest, that righteous New Jerusalem which the prophets hadnforetold. To be in debt was to be under God’s judgment,nwith no sign of special favor—to be divested of a sacrednpatrimony—which was a situation the Saints could notnendure.nThe best way to reconstruct and recover the Massachusettsnview of the purpose and value of the Constitution is bynfollowing seriatim its operations—its unfolding—in thatnstate’s ratifying convention: by such sequential analysis, andnby a close attention to the special Massachusetts objectionsnto what the 55 members of the Great Convention produced.nLeaving aside for the moment the direct influence ofnPuritan origins, the story begins almost a year before thenFramers gathered in Philadelphia and exhibits as its centralncore, its principle of action, the influence of a characteristicnNew England virtue carried so far into the extreme that itnbecame a vice—a pattern which I understand has had someninfluence over the history of the region. The virtue ofnwhich I speak is frugality. After independence had beennachieved and the inhabitants of the old Bay Colony hadnbecome accustomed to life under their 1780 Constitution,nthey began (as was appropriate for the children of thenPuritan Fathers) to regard the massive proportions of theirnstate debt with embarrassment or even guilt and to looknabout for ways of lifting this badge of perfidy from theirncollective backs. Other commonwealths suspended paymentnon foreign obligations or prepared to satisfy creditorsnwith land or a relaxed and protracted schedule of repayments.nBut not Massachusetts. The General Court laid on anheavy tax (as opposed to impost or excise charged againstntrade) which fell in particular on the rural and Westernnportions of the state, on farmers and other holders of realnproperty. All of this occurred in the midst of an agriculturalndepression. In consequence, the courts of common pleasnwere filled with suits against landholders whose propertynwould be sold because they made so littie profit from it.nCompounding these delinquencies was a shortage of specienin circulation, which drove down the price of the farmer’snproduce and the value ofihis acres. And that is to saynnothing of the expense of litigation if brought to the bar ofnjustice, or of the danger of being imprisoned for debt. Thenupshot of all of this distress was a cry of outrage whichnpoured in toward Boston from every corner of the state,nexcept for a few commercial communities, fishing towns, ornseaports—a cry which began in the summer of 1786 withnthe calling of local protest conventions gathered to petitionnthe General Court for relief and which had as its finalnresponse the outbreak of open revolution against the legalnauthority of the state of Massachusetts.nThe traditional view of Shays’ Rebellion in relation to thennnDECEMBER 19871 17n