Key figures: Benjamin Franklin, George Bryan, James Cannon, Timothy Matlack, Thomas Young, Robert Whitehill
Summary
The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, adopted on September 28, 1776, was the most radically democratic of the constitutions written by the American states during the Revolution. Drafted by a convention that met in Philadelphia from July 15 to September 28, 1776—over which Benjamin Franklin nominally presided—it swept away property qualifications and the traditional balance of governmental powers in favor of an unusually direct form of popular rule. Its framers, a coalition of radical Whigs and artisans influenced by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, deliberately rejected the checks and balances that other states retained, believing any restraint on the popular will to be aristocratic.
The document created a single-chamber legislature elected annually, replaced the office of governor with a plural executive council, and extended the vote to virtually all taxpaying adult men. Preceded by a Declaration of Rights modeled partly on Virginia’s, it also established a unique Council of Censors to police the government’s fidelity to the constitution. Praised abroad and denounced at home, the frame of government proved politically divisive and was replaced by a more conventional constitution in 1790.
A Radically Democratic Frame of Government
The constitution’s central innovation was its unicameral legislature, the General Assembly. With no upper house and no executive veto, a single popularly elected chamber held nearly all lawmaking power—a structure unique among the original states, every one of which otherwise adopted a bicameral design. Members were elected annually, and to guard against entrenched power the constitution barred representatives from serving more than four years in any seven. Legislative sessions were open to the public, and most bills had to be printed and laid before the people before a subsequent Assembly could enact them, ensuring broad review.
In place of a governor, executive authority rested in a Supreme Executive Council of twelve members, with a President and Vice-President chosen jointly by the Council and Assembly. The Council possessed no veto over legislation. Suffrage was extended to nearly all men over twenty-one who paid taxes—eliminating the substantial property qualifications common elsewhere and enfranchising artisans, tenant farmers, and, in principle, some taxpaying free men of color. The constitution also created a Council of Censors, elected every seven years, charged with reviewing whether the government had preserved the constitution and, if necessary, calling a convention to amend it.
Controversy and Legacy
The constitution provoked immediate and lasting political conflict in Pennsylvania. Its radical supporters, known as Constitutionalists, faced sustained opposition from Republicans—including James Wilson, Robert Morris, and John Dickinson—who considered the single chamber dangerously unchecked and the absence of a strong executive a recipe for instability. Critics such as John Adams and Benjamin Rush attacked unicameralism as mob rule; Adams’s Thoughts on Government had argued instead for the balanced, bicameral model that most states followed. After more than a decade of factional strife, Pennsylvania abandoned the frame and adopted a new, bicameral constitution with a governor in 1790.
Despite its short life, the 1776 constitution exerted an influence out of proportion to its tenure. It served as the direct model for Vermont’s constitution of 1777 and drew admiration from European reformers; French revolutionaries, including the Marquis de Condorcet, studied it as a working example of democratic government, and it informed debate over the abortive French constitution of 1793. As the boldest experiment in popular sovereignty of the revolutionary era, it stands as a benchmark against which the more restrained federal Constitution of 1787 is often measured.
Significance
The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 pushed the logic of the Declaration of Independence—government by the consent of the governed—further than any other founding-era document. By abolishing property tests, concentrating power in an annually elected assembly, and dispensing with a governor, it tested whether a large polity could be governed by something close to direct majoritarian rule. Its perceived failures fed the arguments of those who, a decade later, designed the checks, balances, and bicameralism of the United States Constitution, making Pennsylvania’s experiment a crucial reference point in the American debate over how to reconcile popular sovereignty with stable government.