State constitutions are blueprints for government institutions,
declarations of collective identity, statements of principle,
values, and goals. It naturally follows, and this book
demonstrates, that the founding documents and the conventions that
produced them reflect the emerging dynamics of American democracy
in the nineteenth century. Nowhere is this more clear, Amy Bridges
tells us in Democratic Beginnings, than in the American West. A
close study of the constitutional conventions that founded eleven
Western states, and of the constitutions they wrote, Democratic
Beginnings traces the arc of Western development. Spanning the
sixty years from California's constitution of 1850 to those of
Arizona and New Mexico in 1910-and including Colorado, Idaho,
Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming-Bridges shows how delegates to these
states' constitutional conventions, pragmatically and creatively
devised law and policy for the unprecedented challenges they faced.
Far from the ""island communities"" of conventional 19th-century
American history, these delegates, and the territories they
represented, were thoroughly engaged in the central issues of their
times, at the local, regional, and national levels-mining and
agriculture, labor law and corporate responsibilities, water rights
and government obligations, education and judicial practice. Theirs
was not the Founders' constitutional convention. With very
different tasks, delegates more representative of the population,
and the experience of living in a democratic republic that their
forebears lacked, the Western delegates found unparalleled
opportunities at the conventions for popular input into law and
public policy. What they did with these opportunities, and how
these in turn shaped the emerging American West, is the story
Democratic Beginnings tells.
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