HISTORIC AMERICAN DOCUMENT APPOINTING JOHN SULLIVAN AS REPRESENTATIVE TO THE CONGRESS OF THE CONFEDERATION ALONG WITH JOHN ADAMS, SAMUEL ADAMS AND JOHN HANCOCK.
Document Signed, as Governor, appointing James Sullivan as one of the Massachusetts delegates to the Congress of the Confederation. Countersigned by Secretary John Avery, Jr. 1 page, folio, with integral blank.
Boston, 12 November 1783
James Sullivan (1744-1808), Governor of MA in 1807, was elected in 1783 by the legislature of Massachusetts to be a delegate for the Commonwealth in the Confederation Congress (the governing body that succeeded the Continental Congress after the Revolutionary War and that preceded the first U.S. Congress). Members of the Confederation Congress from Massachusetts included John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, but unlike these men, Sullivan did not attend a single session of the Congress, as he could not afford to travel to the various cities where the body met, including Maryland, New Jersey, and New York.
The Confederation Congress was the governing body of the United States from March 1, 1781 until March 3, 1789 when the new Constitution of the United States, drafted on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia and adopted by Congress in 1788, created Congress as the governing body for the nation. James Sullivan was, in fact, involved in ratification of the United States Constitution by the state of Massachusetts. Legal historian, Charles Warren, refers to Sullivan as one of the most important legal figures of the time.