http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/display_results.php?id=GLC00099.132
Type of document: Autograph letter signed
Description: Long discussion on Constitutional content and the Constitutional Convention. Countermark reads "HRJoy, Belfast." Loss at top of pages 3 and 4 possibly intended by Pendleton.
Annotation: Writing two weeks after the Convention of 1787 adopted the Constitution, Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the new nation's leading physician described the Constitution as a "masterpiece of human wisdom." "I now look forward to a golden age in America," he wrote. "The new Constitution realizes every hope of the patriot & rewards every toil of the hero." His only misgiving was that he wished the Convention "had gone further, & absorbed more of the power of our State governments." In the following letter to James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," the Virginia jurist Edmund Pendleton offers a careful and candid appraisal of the new Constitution, examining whether it conforms to republican principles of government.
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