The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution

The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution PDF Author: Leonard W. Levy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780756758127
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Spanning the critical years in Amer. history, from 1776-1789, this volume examines the Constitution (CS) from its British & Colonial origins through the years when Americans struggled over the final shape of this founding document. These years saw the 2nd Cont. Cong., the Revol'y. War, & finally, the Constitutional Conv. Includes 21 original essays, written by historians & political scientists, bring to life the people, politics, issues, conflicts, & controversies behind the creation of our CS. Treating the framing & ratification both chronologically & topically, this book provides a detailed account of the creation of our structure of gov't. & the emergence of an Amer. theory & practice of constitutionalism.

The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution

The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution PDF Author: Leonard W. Levy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780756758127
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Get Book Here

Book Description
Spanning the critical years in Amer. history, from 1776-1789, this volume examines the Constitution (CS) from its British & Colonial origins through the years when Americans struggled over the final shape of this founding document. These years saw the 2nd Cont. Cong., the Revol'y. War, & finally, the Constitutional Conv. Includes 21 original essays, written by historians & political scientists, bring to life the people, politics, issues, conflicts, & controversies behind the creation of our CS. Treating the framing & ratification both chronologically & topically, this book provides a detailed account of the creation of our structure of gov't. & the emergence of an Amer. theory & practice of constitutionalism.

Ratification

Ratification PDF Author: Pauline Maier
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684868555
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
The dramatic story of the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, the first new account of this seminal moment in American history in years.

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers PDF Author: Alexander Hamilton
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1528785878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.

Original Meanings

Original Meanings PDF Author: Jack N. Rakove
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307434516
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so, traces its complex weave of ideology and interest, showing how this document has meant different things at different times to different groups of Americans.

The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution

The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution PDF Author: Edward G. Gray
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190257768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution introduces scholars, students and generally interested readers to the formative event in American history. In thirty-three individual essays, the Handbook provides readers with in-depth analysis of the Revolution's many sides.

Ratifying the Constitution

Ratifying the Constitution PDF Author: Michael Allen Gillespie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
How the United States Constitution was ratified by Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York State, North Carolina, Rhode Island.

Negotiating the Constitution

Negotiating the Constitution PDF Author: Joseph M. Lynch
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801472718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
No concept sparks more controversy in constitutional debate than "original intent." Offering a legal historian's approach to the subject, this book demonstrates that the framers deliberately obscured one of their more important decisions. Joseph M. Lynch argues that the Constitution was a product of political struggles involving regional interests, economic concerns, and ideology. The framers, he maintains, settled on enigmatic wording of the Necessary and Proper Clause and of the General Welfare provision in the Spending Clause as a compromise, leaving the extent of federal power to be determined by the political process. During ratification, however, attempts by dissident framers to undo the compromise were repelled in The Federalist: charges of overly broad congressional powers were met with protestations that in fact these powers were limited. Lynch describes how early lawmakers applied the Constitution to such issues as executive power and privilege, the deportation of aliens, and the prohibition of seditious speech. He follows the disputes over the interpretation of this document--focusing on James Madison's changing views--as the new government took shape and political parties were formed. Lynch points out that the first six Congresses and President George Washington disregarded the framers' intentions when they were deemed impractical to follow. In contrast, he warns that the version of original intent put forth in recent Supreme Court opinions regarding congressional power could hinder Congress in serving the nation.

Slavery's Constitution

Slavery's Constitution PDF Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 142995907X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
“A historian finds the seeds of an inevitable civil war embedded in the ‘contradictions, ambiguities, and silences’ about slavery in the Constitution.” —Kirkus Reviews Taking on decades of received wisdom, David Waldstreicher has written the first book to recognize slavery’s place at the heart of the US Constitution. Famously, the Constitution never mentions slavery. And yet, of its eighty-four clauses, six were directly concerned with slaves and the interests of their owners. Five other clauses had implications for slavery that were considered and debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the citizens of the states during ratification. Slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery. By tracing slavery from before the revolution, through the Constitution’s framing, and into the public debate that followed, Waldstreicher rigorously shows that slavery was not only actively discussed behind the closed and locked doors of the Constitutional Convention, but that it was also deftly woven into the Constitution itself. For one thing, slavery was central to the American economy, and since the document set the stage for a national economy, the Constitution could not avoid having implications for slavery. Even more, since the government defined sovereignty over individuals, as well as property in them, discussion of sovereignty led directly to debate over slavery’s place in the new republic. Finding meaning in silences that have long been ignored, Slavery’s Constitution is a vital and sorely needed contribution to the conversation about the origins, impact, and meaning of our nation’s founding document.

Original Intentions

Original Intentions PDF Author: Melvin Eustace Bradford
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780820315218
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
This persuasively argued, decidedly partisan work aims to recover the original United States Constitution by describing its genesis, ratification, and mandate from the perspectives of its original framers. Openly challenging contemporary orthodoxy, M. E. Bradford employs principles of legal, historical, rhetorical, and dramatic analysis to reveal a Constitution notably short on abstract principles and modest in any goal beyond limiting the powers of the government it authorizes. From the beginning of Original Intentions, two sharply divergent convictions about the Constitution emerge. Bradford, arguing from a nomocratic viewpoint, regards the Constitution as an essentially procedural text created expressly to detail how the government may preside over itself not its people. He decries the currently predominant teleologic view, which is based upon the "principles" embodied by the Constitution, and holds that the document was designed to achieve a certain kind of society. By this view, he says, our fundamental laws have been blanketed by a heavy layer of ad hoc solutions to problems they were never intended to address, and then further obscured by the melioristic meddlings of judges, legislators, lawyers, scholars, and journalists. Bradford first shows that the Constitutional convention of 1787 was an enterprise guided by the delegates' hesitancy to impose a higher order over their local, practical, and vastly differing interests. Though all the states would ratify the Constitution, he says, each would interpret it in unique ways. Bradford underscores the dearth of lofty idealism among the original framers by detailing British influences on their political ethos. British common law, on which the framers heavily relied, evolved from a tradition of deliberate responses to practical needs and circumstances, not deductions from abstract utopian designs. In light of these factors, Bradford examines the ratification debates of Massachusetts, South Carolina, and North Carolina - three states that together exemplified the vast range of interests to be accommodated by the Constitution. Next Bradford highlights classic teleologic distortions. Discussing religion and the first amendment, he establishes a pervasive commitment to Christianity among the framers and challenges our notions about the separation of church and state. Warning against anachronistic readings of the Constitution, Bradford also analyzes the rhetoric of the framers to reinforce our awareness of their desire for a government that would contain their multiplicities, not seek to resolve them. In a reading of the Reconstruction amendments (thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen) Bradford argues that they had only a modest impact on the Constitution's original design. By the misconstruction of these amendments, however, the Constitution has been transformed into "a purpose oriented blank check for redesigning American society." In a final chapter Bradford critiques Mortimer Adler's We Hold These Truths and repudiates any broad connection between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Before the Constitution is irreparably damaged, Bradford says, we must realize that it was not the best that the framers could invent but the best that their constituencies would approve. Debates related to normative issues should be settled not within the Constitution but within society, away from the coercive forces of law and politics - or else by amendment.

The Writing and Ratification of the U.S. Constitution

The Writing and Ratification of the U.S. Constitution PDF Author: John R. Vile
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442217685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The writing of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 was, along with the subsequent ratification of the document in state conventions, a major watershed in U.S. history. An understanding of the plans that were offered, the conflicts that were represented, and the arguments that were made are critical to an understanding of many features of the document that was ratified in 1789 as well as in understanding the Bill of Rights that was adopted in 1791. In The Writing and Ratification of the U.S. Constitution: Practical Virtue in Action, John R. Vile focuses on records of debates at the Convention, and provides a unique window into the contestation surrounding this keystone American political moment.