Abstract:
This dissertation utilizes the state ratification conventions of Delaware,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Georgia, Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, and New
York as case studies for analyzing how the public debate over ratification developed and
what this meant for the emergence of participatory politics in the Early Republic. Rather than analyzing the specific political arguments that were at the center of this debate, this study focuses upon printed media Federalists and Antifederalists utilized in the
ratification debates. It aims at discovering not just what was said, but how it was said.
This project expands current historiography by examining the missing element of the
public’s participation, in and shaping of, early American politics by their ownership of
the conventions and their use of media to create spectacles that forced negotiations of
power among competing groups. The battle over the ratification of the Constitution
provided the American public with an extended period to articulate and refine their national goals.
