Sep 17, 2015 - Sale 2391

Sale 2391 - Lot 146

Price Realized: $ 5,720
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(CONSTITUTION.) Izard, Henry. An eyewitness account of the constitutional debates held by the New York Ratifying Convention. Autograph Letter Signed to an unidentified recipient. 4 pages, 7 1/2 x 6 1/4 inches on one folded sheet, with no address panel or postal markings; short separation along center fold. With typed transcript. (MRS) Poughkeepsie, NY, 8 July 1788
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Izard offers a lively and perceptive spectator's account, apparently in an effort to convince his unnamed friend to join him in the gallery: 'This is the time that you ought to come up. . . . The only good thing that you have missed is a dispute that happened between the Chancellor [Robert Livingston] and the opponents of the Constitution. He, after his admirable manner, turned their arguments, vis those of [Melancton] Smith, [John] Lansing & [John] Williams, into ridicule, & was so extremely entertaining, that all without the bar were in a roar of laughter, whilst even the brazen face of Mountebank Williams, so long unused to wear the modest blush of shame, was covered with a stranger crimson. . . . They have been killing and beating each other at Albany on the Fourth of July.' John Lansing, an anti-Federalist, had made the outlandish proposal of adding a Bill of Rights the day before. Izard clearly sympathized with the Federalists in the convention, led by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. After news of Virginia's ratification, 'joy & hilarity were painted in the faces of the Federalists.' The New Yorkers became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution later that month. Provenance: Charles Hamilton auction, 31 January 1966, lot 52, to the consignor. Excerpts from the Hamilton catalogue description were published in The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 21, page 1298.