In the years immediately preceding 1837, when Michigan was at last admitted to the Union, her constitution and State Government were devised by her pioneer inhabitants. The formal proceedings of the Constitutional Conventions of 1835–36 were printed at the time but are now extremely rare volumes. The debates in the Constitutional Conventions were never officially printed, but author Harold M. Dorr has been able to extract many of them from contemporary newspapers and has combined them with the official records in such a way as to present the complete story of how one American state faced and solved the problem of its own organization. Thus, the volume contains materials that the historical student could not gather for himself except at the expenditure of much time and trouble. Dorr is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan.
