Convention, Revolutionary

In English history, conventions, resembling Parliaments in everything but in not being summoned by the crown, were held 1660 and in 1689. Thence the name came to America and was similarly applied, as in Ma achusetts in 1689 and in South Carolina in 1718, to irregular meetings of the popular branch of the Legislature, summoned in the absence of executive authority. In the troubles that led to the Revolution, when royal governors di olved a emblies, they often met again at once in ‘‘conventions.’? These representative bodies soon came to have all authority, to the exclusion of the royal government. In the provisional governments which man. aged the Revolution in each State, the controlling body, up to the time when the first Constitution was made for the State, was the convention. These revolutionary conventions were sovereign bodies, and most commonly they made the State's first Constitution, though soon the feeling grew that this should be done by a special convention elected by the people for that expre purpose. Conventions, supposed to represent the sovereignty of the State in a more complete degree than legislatures could, controlled the nullification proceedings in South Carolina in 1832, and pa ed the ordinances of sece ion on behalf of the Southern States in 1860 and 1861. 183