Note: The newest installment of The Road to the American Revolution is now live on Substack. Follow the series on Facebook, Instagram, and X to keep up with new essays and join the conversation. An excerpt from the article appears below.

Wait a minute—the Constitution wasn’t ratified until 1789!

No, I’m talking about the New Hampshire State Constitution, which was enacted on January 5, 1776, thirteen years before the United States Constitution, and, indeed, before any other state constitution in the emerging nation. It was the first.

And yet, the Constitution of 1776 gets little respect. The State’s own website does not include a page for it. There appear to be no events planned to celebrate its birth. Historians call it a “woefully makeshift” piece of machinery. It was replaced by a completely new constitution on June 2, 1784.

So, was the first the worst?

Let’s take a brief look at the text and context to get a better sense of this very first American constitution.

Though settled in the 1620s, New Hampshire had no royal charter to fall back on when the last royal governor fled in mid-1775. Instead, New Hampshire’s Fourth Provincial Congress, a revolutionary body with dubious constitutional standing, took over basic governmental functions. In October, it asked the Continental Congress in Philadelphia for instructions. The official reply, of November 3, recommended that the Provincial Congress:

call a full and free representation of the people, and that the said representatives, if they think it necessary, shall establish such a form of Government as in their judgment will best produce the happiness of the people, and most effectually secure peace and good order in the colony, during the continuance of the present dispute between Great Britain and the colonies.

In late December 1775, a Fifth Provincial Congress met in Exeter to take up the Continental Congress’s recommendation. On January 5, 1776, this provincial body, “Resolved themselves into a House of Representatives or Assembly for the Colony of New Hampshire,” and as such voted to “take up civil government for this Colony.”

The constitution that they “took up” is short, only 909 words—shorter than the United States Constitution by far, and two-thirds the size of the Declaration of Independence.

After a brief introduction, the framers spend almost a third of the document laying out their grievances against the “ministry of Great Britain”: it has waged war on them, stolen their ships and cargo, and left them without legislature or courts. As a result, they are “reduced to the necessity” of establishing a government to preserve peace and good order and to secure the lives and property of the colony’s inhabitants. The framers protest that they did not seek to throw off their “dependence” on Great Britain and shall “rejoice” if a “reconciliation” can be made. In the meantime, they resolve upon a form of government to continue “during the present unhappy and unnatural contest.”

The resolves that follow make up most of the Constitution…

Read the full article here