Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The original Virginia Constitution of 1776 was enacted at the time of the Declaration of Independence by the first thirteen states of the United States of America. Virginia was an early state to adopt its own Constitution on June 29, 1776, and the document was widely influential both in the United States and abroad. [1]
The Virginia Ratifying Convention (also historically referred to as the "Virginia Federal Convention") was a convention of 168 delegates from Virginia who met in 1788 to ratify or reject the United States Constitution, which had been drafted at the Philadelphia Convention the previous year.
The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the ...
In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared December 15 to be Bill of Rights Day, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. [19] In 1991, the Virginia copy of the Bill of Rights toured the country in honor of its bicentennial, visiting the capitals of all fifty states. [20]
Edmund Pendleton, the presiding officer of the Fifth Virginia Convention. The Fifth Virginia Convention was a meeting of the Patriot legislature of Virginia held in Williamsburg from May 6 to July 5, 1776. This Convention declared Virginia an independent state and produced its first constitution and the Virginia Declaration of Rights.
Christopher Y. Thomas of Henry County proposed a compromise, to simply assert Article VI of the U.S. Constitution for Virginia's Bill of Rights, Section 2, that "the Constitution of the United States, and the laws of Congress passed in pursuance thereof, constitute the supreme law of the land, to which paramount allegiance and obedience are due ...
The Constitution's other innovation was allowing the governor to veto laws passed by the legislature. That proved problematic in the following decades, since the first legislature after adoption of the Constitution adopted measures reaffirming Virginia's prewar debt, at those interest rates (much higher than postwar) and other favorable terms.
Supporters of the Constitution in states where popular sentiment was against ratification (including Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York) successfully proposed that their state conventions both ratify the Constitution and call for the addition of a bill of rights. The U.S. Constitution was eventually ratified by all thirteen states.