Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776

Provides an account of the rebellion of the unprotected frontiersmen and the unfranchised artisans, who constituted two-thirds of the population in Pennsylvania, against the Quaker property owners in their attempt to achieve a voice in the government and establish a liberal constitution in 1776.

Selsam's problem in this able monograph is to determine with exactness which of the conflicting social interests in Pennsylvania were responsible for the first state constitution drafted and adopted in 1776. His materials and subjects are among the most important in the history Quaker commonwealth, for the movement toward the constitutional convention of July, '76, was part of a larger struggle which had been going on between various groups within the colony for more than a decade. The differences of opinion concerning 'who should rule at home' had always been of importance in the counties west of the Schuylkill than the issue of independence, and gradually as mercantile interests either joined the ranks of rebellion were overwhelmed by the radicals, Philadelphians, too, became preoccupied with the effort to subdue the governing agencies to the service of certain groups. The contest over adopting the constitution represented not so much a difference in political credos as it did 'the clash of economic, ethnic, religious, social, sectional interests.' It was an issue which pitted property against poverty, landlord against tenant, sect against sect ; and in describing it Dr. Selsam appropriately uses the analysis which identifies the opinion with the an analysis accepted in some quarters as the merest truism, but elsewhere regarded as a dangerous and bleak materialism. If it were not commendable many other reasons, his book would be important as an example of this suggestive type of historical criticism.