Jonathan Elliot (publisher)

Cover of one of Elliot's editions

Jonathan Elliot was a 19th Century American historian who produced two noted 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. Though surpassed by some recent collections, this work for many years the most complete source of primary material from this period. It was published between 1827 and 1830.

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, and other documents in support of the states' rights position, which was at that time under fire due to the nullification crisis. 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."

HAS SMALL EYES

External links

• Elliot's Debates at the Library of Congress