“Unlocking Humanity: The Surprising Secret Behind What Makes Us Truly Human”
Intimate knowledge of all this may have been why John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams pushed so hard in his post presidency fight to end slavery to make the Declaration of Independence a defining document in the nation, rather than largely just a piece of propaganda as it originally was. John Quincy Adams also cited the Declaration of Independence in this same way in his arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in defending the crew of the Amistad, who’d risen up against their captors aboard that ship in order to free themselves from a life of slavery. More on all this in our recent documentaries The Horribly Dressed, Socially Awkward, Genius President, as well as The True Story of the Amistad.
In the end after a little under two months of work, John Adams completed his draft of the Massachusetts Constitution on October 30, 1779. Then almost immediately left once again for France as, a month before, on September 27th, he had been appointed by the Continental Congress to go negotiate treaties for peace and commerce with Britain.
While the Massachusetts Constitution has been amended 120 times through today, it is still the guiding core document for that states’ government. Making it the oldest codified constitution still functioning today.
So what does this have to do with the formation of the United States Constitution?
Too Good an Opinion of Human Nature
After John Adams, Ben Franklin and co. successfully negotiated the end of the American Revolution with the Treaty of Paris, signed by both sides on September 3, 1783, the United States had a major problem. Despite the name, its states weren’t exactly actually united, generally out to serve their own interests first and, if convenient, those of their loose union. During the war this was less of a problem as they had pressing need to work together. Now, they didn’t.
