Letter from Oliver Ellsworth to Abigail Ellsworth (1787)

by Oliver Ellsworth
  • June 26, 1787
Image: Oliver Ellsworth. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oliver_ellsworth.jpeg
What does Ellsworth’s longing for a “domestic circle where affection is natural and friendship sincere” suggest about the political atmosphere in Philadelphia during the Convention?
Consider Ellsworth’s letter written on June 26, just four days before he proposed the Connecticut Compromise which promoted the idea that the nation was both federal and national in character, helping to end the Convention stalemate. How might Ellsworth’s personal sentiments about the Convention have influenced his actions and decision to propose the compromise?
Constitutional Convention

“Oliver Ellsworth to Abigail Ellsworth,” June 26, 1787. In Supplement to Max Farrand's The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, edited by James H. Hutson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. https://consource.org/document/oliver-ellsworth-to-abigail-ellsworth-1787-6-26/20130122081030/

Mrs. Ellsworth

Our business is yet unfinished and it yet remains uncertain when I shall return home. I am sure I wish for the time for this city has no charms for me. I mix with company without enjoying it and am perfectly tired with flattery and forms. To be very fashionable we must be very trifling and make and receive a thousand professions which everyone knows there is no truth in. Give me a little domestic circle where affection is natural and friendship sincere and I do not care who takes the rest.

I seldom write long letters to anybody and I am sure I need not to you to convince you that I am with the truest and tenderest affection.

Yours Oliver Ellsworth
Love to the little ones

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