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The
United States Constitution
The Federalist Papers: In Modern Language
By Mary E. Webster
In
1788, in what might have been the most important public relations campaign in US history, a series of 85 essays were published
anonymously in two prominent New York newspapers, under the pen name "Publius." With uncommon eloquence and intellectual force,
the essays argued in favor of the newly proposed and not yet ratified US Constitution. Commonly referred to as the Federalist
Papers, the essays constitute what Thomas Jefferson called "the best commentary on the principles of government ... ever written."
At the Constitutional Convention
of 1787, the proposal to replace the existing Articles of Confederation with a federal constitution had met with fierce opposition.
Having just cast off an oppressive British monarchy in a bloody war for independence, many of the representatives of the 13
states attending the Convention were reluctant to create what they feared would be an unrestrained centralized government.
The authors of the Federalist Papers, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, knew that without an intelligent and
persuasive rationale for a federal constitution, the proposal would fail.
To allay the fears of the representatives
of the states, the authors laid out in extraordinary detail the central principles upon which a federal constitution would
be based. They discussed why specific, limited, and enumerated powers were granted to the federal government while the remainder
of the powers were expressly reserved for the states and the people. The essays enumerated each clause in the proposed constitution
and explained what it was meant to accomplish. Constitutional provisions such as the separation of powers, six-year senatorial
terms, trial by jury, states' rights, and numerous others were explained and justified.
On June 21, 1788, the US
Constitution was ratified and its adoption by the states made official. The anonymous publication of the Federalist Papers
in the months preceding the ratification vote was critical in persuading representatives
Abolitionists Ephraim Cutler
In U.S. history, Abolitionists were those who wanted to
bring an end to the enslavement of black people. Extreme Abolitionists denied the validity of any law that recognized slavery
as a legal institution. Some Abolitionists systematically
violated the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 (and the later version made stronger in 1850), by organizing and operating the Underground
Railroad. The Underground Railroad illegally concealed and transported runaway slaves from the Southern United States, across non-slave
states andLake Erie, into Canada. The activities and propaganda of Abolitionists was discredited by conservative Northerners
and violently opposed by almost all Southerners. However Abolitionists did bring to the American concious, the brutality of
slavery.
Ephraim Cutler was an early Abolitionists born
in 1767 at Edgartown (Martha's Vineyard), Maine, the eldest son of the Rev. Dr. Manasseh Cutler. Ephraim lived much of his
early life with his grandfather Hezekiah Cutler in Killingly Connecticut.
Ephraim left Killingly on June 15, 1795 with three shares
of stock in the Ohio Company lands, and arrived at Marietta, (Washington County, Ohio) on September 18, 1795. The move
to Marietta was marred by tragedy, for two of his children died on the trip. He stayed in Marietta until 1799, then moved
his family from Marietta to Waterford (also in Washington County, Ohio). While in Waterford, he engaged in the mercantile
business.
In May of 1799 Ephraim again moved his family to an
1800 acre farm on Federal creek, (then Washington County, Ohio; present day Athens County, Ohio) where he erected a
mill. Shortly thereafter Northwest Territorial Governor, Arthur St. Clair appointed Ephraim Cutler as Common Pleas Court Judge
and Justice of the Peace. He was also appointed a member of the Northwest Territorial Legislature and in 1802, along with
Rufus Putnam and Paul Fearing, Ephraim Cutler was elected one of Washington County's three delegates to the Ohio
Statehood Constitutional Convention.
Through a series of compromises that had been worked
out in the United States Congress between 1785 and 1787, the land that would become the state of Ohio, was divided into districts.
Virginia had rights to much of the land that became southern Ohio. The people who settled in the Virginia Military District
wanted slavery to be legal in the new state of Ohio, even though slavery was prohibited in the Northwest Territory from which
Ohio was formed.
In November of 1802 at the Ohio Constitutional
Convention, the day the vote on the slavery issue was taken, Ephraim Cutler was gravely ill and unable to walk to the Convention
Hall to vote. This situation would have given the pro-slavery faction the victory and Ohio would have become a slave state.
Instead, Rufus Putnam and Paul Fearing carried Ephraim Cutler to the Convention Hall, and he cast the single vote that vetoed
slavery in Ohio!
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