William Paterson, Rare Signer of Constitution, 1776 Signed Document for Payment For New Jersey Constitutional Convention

This is an important and rare piece of history from the 1776 New Jersey Convention. It is a document written just a month after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it is signed a Rare Document Signed "Wm. Paterson" as secretary of New Jersey's Provincial Congress, of New Jersey, one page, 6”x8”, New Jersey, August 7, 1776.

This document Certified that Joseph Hug was present and served 44 days as a Deputy of the New Jersey provincial 1776 Convention. in full:

“It is hereby certified the Joseph Hug Esquire hath attended as a deputy in the convention of the state of New Jersey as a setting of the same in Burlington, Trenton and New Brunswick 44 days for which he is justified to receive the sum of 19 pounds for shillings proclamation dated the seventh day of August 1776. 

signed by William Patterson and Theo Elmer

To either of the treasures of convention in the state of New Jersey"

When the War for Independence broke out, Paterson joined the vanguard of the New Jersey patriots. He served in the provincial congress (1775-76), the constitutional convention (1776), the legislative council (1776-77), and the council of safety (1777). During the last year, he also held a militia commission. From 1776 to 1783 he was attorney general of New Jersey, a task that occupied so much of his time that it prevented him from accepting election to the Continental Congress in 1780.

Initial Drafting of New Jersey’s Constitution

New Jersey's first state constitution was adopted on October 31, 1776. The American Revolutionary War was underway and George Washington had recently been defeated in New York, putting New Jersey in imminent danger of invasion. With Patriot and Tory factions plotting and battling each other, New Jersey was a state at war and was nearly a state at civil war. Composed in a span of five days at the end of June and ratified just two days later on July 2, 1776, the first New Jersey State Constitution reflected the turbulence and uncertainty of the moment. Its primary objective was to provide a basic governmental framework and preempt New Jersey's fall into anarchy. And yet despite being conceived in a state of military emergency, this Constitution was durable enough to serve as the charter document for the State government for the next 68 years.

Vote not limited by race or gender

A notable aspect of this original 1776 New Jersey State Constitution is that it provisioned suffrage to citizens without regard to gender or race. New Jersey stood alone among the original thirteen states of the Revolutionary period in excluding these distinctions.

Paterson also created and submitted The New Jersey Plan (also known as the Small State Plan or the Paterson Plan) was a proposal for the structure of the United States Government presented by William Paterson during the Constitutional Convention on June 15, 1787. The plan was created in response to the Virginia Plan, which called for two houses of Congress, both elected with apportionment according to population. The less populous states were adamantly opposed to giving most of the control of the national government to the more populous states, and so proposed an alternative plan that would have kept the one-vote-per-state representation under one legislative body from the Articles of Confederation.

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