As I mentioned a few days ago, when Pennsylvania drafted its constitution and then voted on it, not everybody involved was on board with the idea.

In June 1776, The Pennsylvania Provincial Conference resolved “that the present Assembly of the Colony is ‘not competent to the exigencies of affairs’ and that a Provincial Convention ought to be called for inaugurating a form of Colonial government, in compliance with the recommendation of Congress”. In short, We gotta move on this, since Independence is around the corner.

So a state convention was called, which met for the first time on July 15, 1776. They determined that whatever government they came up with would supersede whatever was in place at the time of ratification. Then they established a Council of Safety which would handle things in the interim. So the Council of Safety was designed specifically to be obsolete once a Constitution was in place. The change of government, was, however, opposed by many of the commonwealth’s citizens: John Dickinson, James Wilson, Robert Morris, and Frederick Muhlenberg, among others.

The Constitutional Convention elected Benjamin Franklin as their president, along with Colonel George Ross, vice-president, John Morris, secretary, and Jacob Garrigues, assistant-secretary. Given this particular group of men, it’s no surprise that the new Constitution borrowed pretty heavily from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, with an underlying fear of an aristocracy and words such as “liberty” and “the people’s government.” Giving so much power to a lower class and limiting the power of the upper reaches of government clearly reflects this fear.

This constitution was in use until 1790, when another convention refined a few items and instituted a bicameral legislature. There have been a few more updates, but the Pennsylvania Constititution has essentially been the same since 1968.

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