John Adams: Report of a Constitution, or Form of Government, for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

John Adams's Report of a Constitution, or Form of Government, for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (October 1779) is an official working document, distributed in print exclusively to the members of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention for their use in debating proposed changes to a state constitution and giving it their final approval. It survives only in printed form. The report was nominally the work of the convention's thirty-member drafting committee, which received the rough draft from a three-man subcommittee, but over 90 percent of the text is Adams's work. Subsequently adopted by the people of the state, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 was the most systematic and detailed constitution produced during the Revolutionary era. Its form and content were copied by other states in later years, and it was an influential model for the framers of the U.S. Constitution of 1787.