1786 Constitution of Vermont: Structure, Voting, and Schools

The 1786 Constitution of Vermont was the revised charter of the independent Republic of Vermont, adopted on July 4, 1786, to replace the state’s original 1777 constitution. It introduced a formal separation of powers, gave the executive a suspensive veto over legislation, expanded religious protections, and added an early just-compensation requirement for property taken by the government. It kept the features that had made Vermont’s 1777 charter unusual: a constitutional ban on adult slavery and voting rights that did not depend on owning property. The 1786 document governed Vermont through its admission to the Union in 1791 and was itself revised in 1793.

How the 1786 Revision Came About

Vermont’s 1777 constitution created an unusual oversight body called the Council of Censors: thirteen men elected statewide every seven years for a single one-year term, barred from being sitting legislators or executive officers. Their job was to review the previous seven years of governance, decide whether the branches had kept within constitutional limits, and propose amendments.¹

The first Council of Censors convened in 1785, meeting in three sessions at Norwich, Windsor, and Bennington between June 1785 and February 1786.² Finding constitutional deficiencies, it called a convention, which adopted the revised constitution on July 4, 1786. Vermont thereby became the first state to amend its constitution through a constitutionally prescribed process. The Council also published “Addresses” to the people of Vermont explaining and defending its proposed amendments, so citizens could instruct their delegates.¹

At the time, Vermont still functioned as a sovereign republic that Congress refused to recognize, largely because New York claimed the territory. The state repeatedly petitioned for admission, and the 1786 constitution explicitly sought alignment with principles “agreeable to the direction of the honorable American Congress.” Recognition would not come until 1791.³

What Was in the Document

The 1786 constitution kept the two-part structure of its predecessor: a Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants (Chapter I) and a Plan or Frame of Government (Chapter II).⁴

Declaration of Rights

Chapter I contained twenty-three articles. The opening article declared that “all men are born equally free and independent” and possess inherent rights to life, liberty, the acquisition and protection of property, and the pursuit of happiness. The declaration protected freedom of speech, writing, and publishing; the right to bear arms; the right of assembly and petition; protection against unreasonable search and seizure, with warrants required to rest on oath or affirmation; and the right to a speedy public trial by an impartial jury, with protections against self-incrimination and excessive bail.⁴

The anti-slavery clause, carried forward from 1777, prohibited holding any male over twenty-one or any female over eighteen as a servant, slave, or apprentice without their consent. This made Vermont the first jurisdiction in North America to constitutionally ban adult slavery.⁴ A new provision stated that “whenever any particular man’s property is taken for the use of the public, the owner ought to receive an equivalent in money,” one of the earliest constitutional guarantees of just compensation in American law.³

The Legislature

Supreme legislative power rested in a unicameral “House of Representatives of the freemen,” known as the General Assembly, which met annually on the second Thursday of October.³ For the first seven years, towns with eighty or more taxable inhabitants sent two representatives and smaller towns sent one; after that, every inhabited town sent one. Members were elected annually by ballot and were expected to be “noted for wisdom and virtue.”⁴

The Assembly enacted laws, chose its own officers, judged the elections and qualifications of members, redressed grievances, impeached state officials, granted charters of incorporation, constituted towns and counties, and elected delegates to Congress. Together with the Governor’s Council, it also elected judges, sheriffs, and military officers. The Assembly was explicitly barred from altering any part of the constitution and could not declare any person guilty of treason or felony.⁴

The Executive

Executive power was vested in a Governor, a Lieutenant-Governor (the 1777 title of “Deputy Governor” was changed), and a Council of twelve, all elected annually by the freemen of each town by written ballot. Constables collected the ballots and delivered them to the Assembly, where a joint committee of Council and Assembly counted them. A majority was required to win; if no candidate reached it, the Council and Assembly chose the Governor by joint ballot.⁴

The Governor served as Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of the state’s forces but could not command them in person without the Council’s advice. The Governor and Council together appointed officers, filled vacancies, corresponded with other states, ensured laws were faithfully executed, and prepared business for the Assembly. They could grant pardons and remit fines, though in cases of treason and murder they could grant only reprieves until the end of the next Assembly session. They also sat as judges for impeachment trials, with the Supreme Court judges available for advice.⁴

The Judiciary

Every county was required to have courts of justice, including any newly formed county. Judges of the Supreme Court served as justices of the peace throughout the state; county court judges did the same within their own counties. The legislature could establish a Court of Chancery but could not sit as judges of it. Judges of the supreme, county, and probate courts were elected annually by the General Assembly together with the Council, and no one could simultaneously hold a Supreme Court judgeship and another state office such as governor, treasurer, or sheriff.⁴³

What Changed From 1777

The 1786 revision moved Vermont from its original radically democratic framework toward a more structured government, though several of the changes cut in different directions.

Separation of Powers

The most consequential structural change was a formal separation of powers clause. Chapter II, Section VI declared: “The legislative, executive and judiciary departments shall be separate and distinct, so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the other.”⁴ No equivalent language existed in the 1777 document.

The Suspensive Veto

Under the 1777 constitution, the Governor and Council could review bills and propose amendments but had no power to delay them. The 1786 revision created a “suspensive veto”: if the Assembly rejected the Governor and Council’s proposed amendments, the executive could suspend the bill until the next legislative session. If the executive failed to return a bill with written amendments within five days, it automatically became law. The framers described the mechanism as ensuring laws were “maturely considered” and preventing “the inconvenience of hasty determinations.”⁵

The arrangement proved contentious. A dispute in 1826 over whether suspended bills could take effect the following session without further executive approval contributed to the abolition of the executive council in 1836 and its replacement by a state senate and a more conventional gubernatorial veto.⁵

Religion

Religious protections widened. The 1777 constitution had limited certain protections to those “who profess the protestant religion”; the 1786 version dropped that qualifying phrase, extending free-exercise protections to all inhabitants. A new clause stated that no person could “be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments, or peculiar mode of religious worship.” The requirement that every denomination support religious worship was also deleted.³⁶

A tension remained. The Frame of Government still required every member of the General Assembly to subscribe to a declaration professing belief in God, acknowledging the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testaments, and owning “the Protestant religion,” and the same section then declared that “no further or other religious test shall ever hereafter be required of any civil officer or magistrate, in this State.”⁴ Vermont was not alone in that inconsistency: nine of the fourteen states at the time maintained some form of religious test for officeholders, including North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Delaware.⁷

Other Adjustments

An explicit requirement that private property taken for public use be compensated with “an equivalent in money,” absent from the 1777 document.³
A new provision protecting freedom of deliberation, speech, and debate within the legislature.⁶
A narrowed speech-and-press clause, with the added qualifier “concerning the transactions of government.” The 1777 version and the Pennsylvania Constitution had been the only two state constitutions to expressly protect freedom of speech at all.⁸
The right to “abolish” government was removed, leaving only the right to “reform or alter” it.³
The people’s right to choose their own colonels was removed; militia companies now elected captains and subalterns, who then nominated field officers.³
A two-thirds quorum was required to raise a state tax, and the legislature was directed to ensure any proposed tax served the community more than leaving those funds uncollected.³
The oath of office was secularized, dropping “by the ever living God” and adding the option of affirmation under penalties of perjury.³

Who Could Vote

The 1786 constitution preserved universal male suffrage without property qualifications. Any man aged twenty-one or older who had resided in the state for one year, maintained “quiet and peaceable behaviour,” and took an oath of allegiance was entitled to vote. The document suggested that a freeman without a “sufficient estate” ought to have a profession, trade, or farm, but this was framed as guidance about personal independence rather than a legal barrier.⁴³

That made Vermont an outlier. In 1790, ten of the thirteen states in the Union maintained property qualifications for voting, from a freehold worth forty shillings per year in Connecticut to a fifty-acre freehold or town lot in Virginia. Vermont had no property requirement at all.⁹ By 1800, only three states had universal white male suffrage: Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Vermont was also one of just six states during this period that permitted free African Americans to vote.¹⁰

Schools and Education

The 1786 constitution required that “a competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town for the convenient instruction of youth” and that “one or more grammar schools be incorporated, and properly supported in each county in this State.” The clause sat alongside a “virtue and vice” provision calling for laws to encourage virtue and prevent immorality.⁴ Vermont’s 1777 constitution had been the first state constitution to guarantee an educational system stretching from primary schools to a university. The 1786 language softened “shall be established” to “ought to be maintained,” a shift toward reliance on local and private support rather than direct state mandate.¹¹

Education remains the only governmental service accorded constitutional status in Vermont, and the clause has served as the foundation for significant judicial rulings, including the Vermont Supreme Court’s 1997 decision in Brigham v. State, which struck down the state’s property-tax-based school funding system as unconstitutional.¹²

How Long It Lasted

The 1786 constitution governed Vermont through the state’s admission to the Union in 1791. Two years later, the Council of Censors convened again and called another convention, which produced the 1793 constitution. That revision deleted the preamble’s fourteen paragraphs of grievances against New York, no longer needed once Vermont had achieved statehood; required legislative appropriation before any money could be drawn from the treasury; established residency requirements for elected officials; and prohibited legislators from receiving fees for legislative acts.⁶

The 1793 constitution remains the core of Vermont’s governing document. Later amendments converted the unicameral legislature to a bicameral system with a thirty-member senate and a 150-member house (1836), abolished the Council of Censors (1870), and raised the gubernatorial veto override threshold to two-thirds (1913). In 2022, one amendment explicitly prohibited “slavery and indentured servitude in any form,” and another added Article 22 protecting “personal reproductive autonomy.”⁶ The features first articulated in 1777 and refined in 1786, particularly the anti-slavery provision, universal male suffrage, and the commitment to public education, continue to shape Vermont law.

1
Vermont Secretary of State. Amending the Constitution – Process
2
Vermont Secretary of State. Vermont Records of the Council of Censors
3
Vermont Secretary of State. 1786 Constitution
4
Yale Law School – Avalon Project. Constitution of Vermont, 1786
5
Vermont Secretary of State. Vetoes
6
State Court Report. Vermont Constitution: Early Grievances, Notable Early Protections Still
7
Center for the Study of the American Constitution. Religious Tests and Oaths in State Constitutions
8
Vermont Law Review. Teachout on the Vermont Constitution
9
University of Wisconsin. Table A.1 – Suffrage Requirements
10
Gilder Lehrman Institute. Winning the Vote: A History of Voting Rights
11
Vermont History. County Grammar Schools
12
Albany Law Review. Vermont’s Tradition of Education and the Vermont Constitution