Last year I celebrated Consitution Week with a post about how an injustice that happened to my ancestor, Thomas Amis, led to the creation of the United States Constitution. In June of 1786, he was sailing down the Mississippi with a cargo of trade goods, when he inadvertently broke a new Spanish law limiting American trade. With the utmost of courtesy, the Spanish commandant relieved him of his boat and cargo, and sent him back home on foot. Of course he told his story to everyone he met on his journey home, which quickly inflamed the popular sentiment against the Spaniards. You've never heard about the Flour War with Spain only because cooler heads prevailed in the end, but it was a close thing.
So while my 5th great grandfather didn't have a direct hand in writing the Constitution, his experience embodied the frustrations experienced by Americans who had no recourse when confronting the arbitrary rulings of a foreign government. His was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I'll refer you to my earlier post here, and will just add that I've recently found a portrait of Thomas, in a history of the North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati published in 1907:
So while my 5th great grandfather didn't have a direct hand in writing the Constitution, his experience embodied the frustrations experienced by Americans who had no recourse when confronting the arbitrary rulings of a foreign government. His was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I'll refer you to my earlier post here, and will just add that I've recently found a portrait of Thomas, in a history of the North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati published in 1907:
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| Charles Lukens Davis, North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati (Boston: Riverside Press), 1907, p. 56; digital images, Hathitrust (http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009581836 : accessed 14 Sep 2015). |
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