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CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. Weatherwise's Federal

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Boston: John Norman, [1787]. 24 pp., 8vo (165 x 105 mm). Woodcut illustration of the Grand Convention on the first page, woodcut of the ruins of a city found on the Ohio River on p. 18. Stitched self-wrappers, uncut. Housed in a red morocco-backed clamshell case. Condition: edge tears to the preliminary and terminal leaves, the terminal leaf nearly torn in half; restitched at an early date and contents now unstitched. rare almanac illustrated with an early view of the constitutional convention. "On the cover is a woodcut of 'The Grand Convention' showing two rows of men sitting on either side of a panelled room with the presiding officer standing behind a table at the end of the room ... The Convention broke up on September, 1787 and this, if not the first graphic representation ever made of it, is certainly a very early one" (Hamilton). Below the image is the following poem: "Behold conven'd in firm debate, / Of high importance to each State; / Our honour'd fathers sit. / And knowledge ruling at the helm, / They wisely point to every realm; / The rocks on which they've split. / Aloud they cry, that Luxury's charms, / Are worse than Indians cloath'd in arms; / And deeper wound the whole. / Then high they rais'd, a godlike mound, / The States in Federal virtue bound; And bid their Fame sublime to roll." Drake 3403; Evans 20860; Hamilton 121; Snyder, COI 253.

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