The purpose of the Provisional Constitution, written by John Brown in 1858 and submitted at a meeting of abolitionists in Chatham, in what is now Ontario, Canada, is debated by historians today. While some believe it to be the founding document of a new abolitionist state that Brown hoped would emerge in the Appalachian Mountains, others consider it to be impractical. Some believe Brown wrote the document as a correction to the United States Constitution. Many abolitionists interpreted the U.S. Constitution as being a proslavery document. At the same time, however, those same abolitionists remained fiercely loyal to the U.S. Constitution and the government it created. Brown’s Provisional Constitution might have been an attempt to rectify the errors abolitionists saw in the U.S. Constitution without rebelling against the government it established.