The exhibit “The American Revolution and The Early Republic: An Exhibit of Manuscripts and Rare Books from Special Collections” is on view through December 20, 2013 at the Margaret Clapp Library at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
This exhibit was put together by Mariana S. Oller, Associate Curator of Special Collections at Wellesley College. Oller is also the Chair of the AHA Society. She writes in the Friends of the Wellesley College Library newsletter:
“After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less that the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed…”
Thus Alexander Hamilton addressed the People of the State of New York in October 1787 in his opening paragraph to the First number of The Federalist – the most influential work of political philosophy published in the U.S. in the late 18th century, which has retained its relevance and critical importance to the interpreting of the U.S. Constitution until this day. The first serial printing of the U.S. Constitution appeared in the September 1787 issue of The American Museum – a publication of the noted Philadelphia printer Mathew Carey. It is currently on view alongside an early edition of The Federalist at the Margaret Clapp Library as part of an impressive exhibition of books and manuscripts from Special Collections, entitled “The American Revolution and the Early Republic.”
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