Key figures: Thomas Chittenden, Ira Allen, delegates of the Windsor Convention
Summary
On July 8, 1777, a convention of seventy-two delegates meeting at Windsor, Vermont, in a building later known as the Old Constitution House, formally adopted the first constitution of what they called the independent Republic of Vermont. The convention had opened on July 2, 1777, drawing delegates from across the New Hampshire Grants — the territory claimed simultaneously by both New York and New Hampshire. Vermont’s declaration of independence from the colony of New York, issued on January 15, 1777, had set the stage for this constitutional moment, but the new republic was not recognized by the Continental Congress, which deferred to New York’s territorial claims. Vermont would remain an independent republic for fourteen years before being admitted to the United States as the fourteenth state in 1791.
The constitution was drafted in large measure from Pennsylvania’s constitution of 1776, including its adoption of a unicameral (single-chamber) legislature — a structure Georgia also followed. Vermont’s document opened with a “Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont” that anticipated the federal Bill of Rights by more than a decade. Key figures in the convention included Thomas Chittenden, who would become Vermont’s first governor in 1778, and Ira Allen, later known as the founder of the University of Vermont.
The drafters wrote broadly in the natural-rights tradition of Locke and the republican civic virtue of New England Congregationalist culture. The text addressed not only the structure of government — executive, legislative, and judicial branches — but also fundamental liberties, access to education, and the legal status of persons held in bondage.
Significance
First Constitution to Prohibit Adult Slavery in North America
Vermont’s constitution contained the most explicit anti-slavery provision in any North American governing document to that date. Article I of the Declaration of Rights stated that “all men are born equally free and independent” and that therefore “no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice.” The provision specified that enslaved males became free at age twenty-one and enslaved females at age eighteen — a limitation that critics have noted preserved a form of child indenture even as it banned the institution in principle. Nevertheless, the provision was a radical departure from every other colonial and state constitution in North America at the time, none of which had moved to abolish slavery in their founding documents. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture recognizes the 1777 constitution as a landmark early step against slavery in the United States.
Universal Male Suffrage
The constitution extended the right to vote to all adult males, explicitly removing the property-ownership requirements that restricted the franchise in every other state. This was an exceptionally progressive suffrage provision for the era. The universal male suffrage clause included free Black men, making Vermont one of the earliest jurisdictions in North America to recognize their political rights. The provision influenced later suffrage debates across the new republic, serving as a precedent that popular participation in government need not be tied to property ownership.
Anticipating the Federal Bill of Rights
Vermont’s Declaration of Rights, adopted twelve years before the federal Bill of Rights (1789), guaranteed freedoms of religion, speech, and assembly; the right to trial by jury; protections against unreasonable search and seizure; and public funding for schools. The constitution’s forward-looking provisions made Vermont’s admission to the Union controversial: Southern states strongly opposed Vermont statehood in 1791 specifically because of its slavery prohibition, fearing the precedent it would set. Vermont was nonetheless admitted as the first new state after the original thirteen.