The First Massachusetts Constitution, and How Town Actions Derailed It

Join the Bidwell House Museum on Zoom for the first of four history talks planned for the 2026 season. We start with Western Michigan University Professor Sally Hadden.

Massachusetts enjoys the distinction that its constitution is the “oldest functioning constitution” in the world. But this honor applies to the 1780 state constitution, which is far better known than its proposed predecessor, the Massachusetts 1776 state constitution. Why was that version of the state constitution rejected by the people? What faults did they identify, and how did the 1780 document that John Adams drafted differ from the 1776 version?

Sally Hadden is a legal historian of early America and the antebellum United States. Her book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas described the white-on-black violence that pervaded America’s slave societies. She co-edited the Blackwell Companion to American Legal History (with Al Brophy) and Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History (with Patricia Minter). She is completing a study entitled Cities of Lawyers: Lawyers in Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston that examines the working lives of attorneys in three eighteenth-century seaports. With Maeva Marcus, she is also writing a study of the first Supreme Court and its forebears. Hadden is a past officer and board member of the American Society of Legal History and she serves on the editorial board of Law and History Review. She is a professor of history at Western Michigan University.

This lecture will be held via Zoom. The link will be sent to all ticket holders 2 days in advance of the program.