Making Our Nation: Constitutions and Related Documents. Sold to Benefit the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation. Part 1

Making Our Nation: Constitutions and Related Documents. Sold to Benefit the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation. Part 1

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 55. United States Congress | Elias Boudinot's copy of the Acts Passed at the Second Session of the Congress .

United States Congress | Elias Boudinot's copy of the Acts Passed at the Second Session of the Congress

Auction Closed

November 23, 05:04 PM GMT

Estimate

25,000 - 35,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

United States Congress

Acts Passed at the Second Session of the Congress of the United States of America, Begun and Held at the City of New York, on Monday, the Fourth of January in the Year M,DCC,XC ... New York: Francis Childs & John Swaine, [1790]


Folio (299 x 191 mm). Some strong browning, library stamp on title-page effaced leaving a few small holes in margin not affecting text. Contemporary half calf over marbled boards; some restoration to corners and spine, hinges strengthened. Brown cloth folding-case.


Elias Boudinot's copy. Boudinot (1740–1821) was a prominent New Jersey lawyer with a long, prestigious political career beginning in 1775. In 1777 he was named as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress but competing responsibilities forced his resignation in 1778. He returned to Congress in 1781, and in 1782 he was appointed President of the Continental Congress for a one-year term. On 15 April 1783 he signed the Preliminary Articles of Peace. When the United States government was formed in 1789, Boudinot was elected from New Jersey to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected to the second and third congresses as well, where he generally supported the administration.


Several of the acts involved a reduction of the national debt, remuneration and relief to soldiers and seamen, one of which was to entitle officers and soldiers of the Virginia line lands northwest of the Ohio River. The volume also includes printings of the Treaty of Alliance with France (1778), the Treaty of Commerce and Amity with France and the Netherlands (both dated 1782), the Definitive Treaty of Peace (1783), and treaties with various Indian nations (1784–1790), including the Six Nations, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Creek tribes, which substantially expanded the western and southern boundaries of the United States and its territories.


Scarce: only three copies are cited in the auction records, in 1908, 1920, and 2007, the latter a defective copy.


REFERENCE

ESTC W14343; Evans 22952


PROVENANCE

Elias Boudinot (signature on title-page and p. 80) — New Jersey College Library (stamp on title-page [effaced] and on p. 45, accession number and withdrawn stamps on p. 3)