Papers of John Adams, volume 19
th.1788
Give me leave to congratulate you on your happy arrival in your native Country; & on the respectable reception that has attended it. I beg the favor of you to present my congratulations in the same account to Mrs. Adams.
Tho’ I am not an Admirer of the new Constitution, yet as you approve of it & as a great many wise & good men expect much honor & advantage to our Country from the adoption of it, I congratulate you also on the accession of Virginia, to its adoption.
Our latest Accounts from the Convention of this State inform us that notwithstanding the ratification of Virginia a great majority continues firm against adoptn.
1 The Packet from England, arrivd yesterday, but I do not hear She brought any thing new.2
I have the honor / to be, with very great esteem, / dear Sir, Yr. most / Obedt. Servt
RC (Adams Papers); endorsed: “Hon. A. Lee. July 4. / ansd. 18. 1788.”
The Virginia ratification convention met on 2 June in Richmond. The 170 delegates assembled as a committee of the whole and planned to discuss the U.S. Constitution, clause by clause. However, for ten days of the convention, Patrick Henry hijacked the debates in a series of long speeches attacking the document and demanding a bill of rights. On 25 June the Virginia delegates voted 89 to 79 for ratification. Two days later, the convention also approved a bill of rights, which was essentially a revised version of the 1776 Virginia Bill of Rights, and twenty amendments to be sent to Congress (Maier, Ratification
, p. 255, 259, 267, 284–285, 300, 305, 307–309). See also Samuel Allyne Otis’ 7 July 1788 letter, and note 1, below.
The packet Roebuck, Capt. Britton, sailed from Falmouth, England, to New York City on a 64-day voyage (Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, 9 July).