Jonathan Elliot was a 19th-century American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 who produced two influential collections of documents connected with the early American republic. The first was a five-volume collection entitled The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, which encompassed the time between the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the opening of the government under the newly ratified constitution in 1789. This work for many years was the most complete source of primary material from this period. It was first published between 1827 and 1830, and issued in a revised version in 1861 after Elliot's death. It has long been criticized for its haphazard and biased editing, and it has been rendered obsolete by the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, 1787-1791, launched in 1976 by the historian Merrill Jensen

Merrill Jensen

Merrill Monroe Jensen was an American historian whose research and writing focused on the ratification of the United States Constitution. His historical interpretations are generally considered to be of the "Progressive School" of American history, the most famous exponent of which was Charles A....

 and continued by his students John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, Richard Leffler, and Charles Schoenleber.

The second collection is the 1832 work The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and '99; with Jefferson's Original Draught Thereof. Also, Madison's Report, Calhoun's Address, Resolutions of the Several States in Relation to State Rights. With Other Documents in Support of the Jeffersonian Doctrines of '98. This book contained the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, the Report of 1800

Report of 1800

The Report of 1800 was a resolution drafted by James Madison arguing for the sovereignty of the individual states under the United States Constitution and against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Adopted by the Virginia General Assembly in January 1800, the Report amends arguments from the 1798...

, and other documents in support of the states' rights

States' rights

States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...

 position, which was at that time under fire due to the nullification crisis

Nullification Crisis

The Nullification Crisis was a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson created by South Carolina's 1832 Ordinance of Nullification. This ordinance declared by the power of the State that the federal Tariff of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within...

. As H. Jefferson Powell puts it, Elliot was more than "simply an assiduous gatherer of historical information about the Constitution: he was an active participant…in the constitutional debates of his day."

External links

• Elliot's Debates at the Library of Congress