On this day in New York · April 20, 1777
New York Adopts Its First Constitution
With British troops occupying the city and the war going badly, a traveling convention finished the state's founding charter in a Kingston courthouse and went home the same night.
The facts
- Date adopted
- Sunday evening, April 20, 1777
- Where
- Kingston, New York, at the Ulster County Courthouse (now the Senate House State Historic Site)
- Lead drafters
- John Jay, with Robert R. Livingston and Gouverneur Morris
- First governor
- George Clinton, elected under the new constitution and took office July 30, 1777
New York's revolutionary government had been on the run for nearly a year, meeting wherever the British army wasn't, when it finally landed in Kingston to finish the job. On the evening of April 20, 1777, the convention adopted the state's first constitution, the document that would govern New York through the war and for decades after. John Jay did most of the drafting, working alongside Robert R. Livingston and Gouverneur Morris, though Jay himself had already left for home after his mother's death and wasn't in the room when the vote was taken. It passed with a single dissenting vote. The new charter created something New York hadn't had before: an elected governor, chosen by the people rather than appointed by a king.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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The first Constitutional Convention in New York's history terminated its labors at Kingston, New York, on Sunday evening, April 20, 1777, when the new Constitution was adopted with but one dissenting vote, and then adjourned.
Wikipedia's account of the convention's final session at Kingston
Source: Wikipedia -
Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the constitution of his country.
John Jay, addressing New Yorkers on the new constitution, 1777
Source: New York State Museum
Why it still matters
This was New York governing itself for the first time, on the fly, mid-invasion, and the office it invented that night, an elected governor answerable to voters instead of a crown, is the same office New Yorkers still vote for every four years.
Sources
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