From 1819 to 1861, a fever for constitutional revision gripped American states. Every state called a convention to reform, and in some cases, entirely rewrite its state constitution. Most states, however, confronted constitutional crises they were ill-equipped to resolve. Swift population growth, westward expansion, and sectional conflict triggered battles over democracy and human rights. Coincidentally, during those fractious decades, democratic revolutions also swept across Europe, launching a wave of constitutional drafting and revision. My paper asks a core question about mid-19
th century American constitutionalism: why did every state in the Union write or revise its charter during those restless years? And why did this happen precisely at the same time as the European revolutionary era, when nearly every nation on the continent crafted new charters?
On the European side, the bodies that composed constitutions were attempting to establish new nations, to allay revolutionary fervor, and to enshrine liberal democracy. By contrast, American states were less concerned with overt political upheavals. Rather, they grappled with pragmatic problems: rapid population growth; the rise of Jacksonian democracy; the acquisition of vast new territories that exacerbated the strife over the fate of human bondage; and, finally, the fights over the political rights of disenfranchised people.
My paper presents a comparison between the American constitutional conventions and European post-revolutionary constituent assemblies, and pays close attention to the trans-Atlantic constitutional debates over, and mutual influences on human rights and citizenship.
