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Ratification The People Debate the Constitution 17871788 Pauline Maier 9780684868547 Books

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Ratification The People Debate the Constitution 17871788 Pauline Maier 9780684868547 Books

This is a magnificent history of what was the most famous and most consequential debate in the long story of the American republic. The argument, which wound its way through each of the original 13 colonies, was plainly about the method and structure of governing a diverse population, which had only recently defeated the British army and navy and which now needed to construct the grand design of the American republic. This was no easy task. Differences were wide: how were the rights and habits of the individual states to be blended into a national government? How could the interests of each citizen be represented in a national congress? How much power should the central government have relative to the power of the separate states?

The 13 colonies had just been through an enormously exhausting war. Britain was defeated, but barely. The French navy, anxious to avenge centuries of dealing with Britain’s superior naval forces, was critical in the final stage of the colonies’ revolt against British rule. But the colonies were quite different in many ways. Their economies ranged from cotton and tobacco in the south to the beginnings of an industrial revolution in the north. These differences shaped quite different points of view as the debate wound through basic concepts of centralized power, the need for checks and balances within the evolving system of government, the desire for a clear listing of basic rights protecting the individual from what would be a central government.

The document itself was only about 4,000 words. The amendments, now numbering 27, were far shorter. And this is the document that governs the American people. The story of the arguments over its basic tenets is, in a very real sense, critical to understanding the way our system works.
Pauline Maier has done a marvelous job in two major respects: first, she has presented the arguments for and against each of the major concepts contained in the Constitution; only through these arguments can we grasp the importance of each of these concepts. Second, she has organized the history in a way that we can grasp the building momentum, state by state, for supporting the Constitution.

This is difficult history since it is mainly a history of ideas, not major battles, not a history of a brilliant individual. But it is at the essence of who we Americans are as a people. And here we are, 230 years after the drafting of this marvelous document, still governed by its basic concepts.


Tags : Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 [Pauline Maier] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. From the distinguished historian of Revolutionary-era America and author of the acclaimed American Scripture comes this fresh and surprising account of a pivotal moment in American history—the ratification of the Constitution.<BR><BR>When the delegates left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September 1787,Pauline Maier,Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788,Simon & Schuster,0684868547,United States - Revolutionary Period (1775-1800),Constitutional history - United States,Constitutional history;United States.,Constitution,Constitutional history,Constitutions,GENERAL,General & world history,General Adult,HISTORY General,HISTORY United States General,HISTORY United States Revolutionary Period (1775-1800),History,History - U.S.,History of the Americas,HistoryAmerican,History: American,Legal aspects,Non-Fiction,POLITICAL SCIENCE Constitutions,Political ScienceConstitutions,Public opinion,U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY,U.S. HISTORY - REVOLUTION AND CONFEDERATION (1775-1789),United States,United States - General,United States.

Ratification The People Debate the Constitution 17871788 Pauline Maier 9780684868547 Books Reviews

I have taught Civics and History for over 30 years and I have found it difficult to find books that detail the struggle to get the Constitution ratified. Almost always, historians focus on the difficulty in writing the document and then they mention that Federalists supported it and anti-Federalists opposed it. But, in the end it was ratified with cheering and fireworks. Pauline Maier's book fills in the struggle and compromises to get 13 separate states to see beyond their own narrow self-interest and take a gamble that the Constitution was better than the Articles of Confederation. The serious debates about political power and the nuances of rights is absolutely fascinating. I, especially liked, how she explains how the delegates in each state were chosen to attend each states Constitutional Convention. Loved the book and she has filled in some questions that as a historian, I have always had about this remarkable part of our nations history.
Ratification, by MIT historian Pauline Maier, presents a detailed history of the debates in 1787-88 that preceded the ratification of the US Constitution. Today, two centuries plus two decades after the Constitution was ratified, it has long since achieved the status of holy writ, sacred scripture, never to be questioned. Part of its durability lies in the fact that it was questioned, vigorously, by many of prominent leaders at the time of its ratification. Dr. Maier has provided a detailed, state-by-state, history of the issues debated by these leaders in the 13 state ratifying conventions.

Some of these state-by-state histories may be of interest primarily to the dedicated student of the early years of the republic. However, the issues and the "parties" (forerunners of the first political parties) are important to anyone who hopes to understand the Constitution and the thoughts of those who wrote and ratified it as the basis for the US federal government.

The primary issues at the time of the Constitutional Convention included the following

* Under the Articles of Confederation, the Federal Congress could print paper money (but not coin) and incur debts but had no power of taxation. Not surprisingly, inflation destroyed the value of the currency, and the government was insolvent. Something needed to be done.

* The Constitutional Convention was called by the Continental Congress to propose changes to the Articles of Confederation, not to replace them with a new charter. None-the-less, it the Convention drafted an entirely new Constitution and proposed that it be approved directly by the states, bypassing the Continental Congress. How should the Continental Congress respond to being sidelined in the approval process, its mandate ignored, and its existence threatened?

* Should a Bill of Rights be added to the proposed Constitution? If so, should it be added before ratification or after?

* Leaving revision of the Constitution to the states prior to ratification would likely result in a plethora of proposed changes. The 13 states might well approve 13 different version of the Constitution. Then what?

* Postponing changes until after ratification presented the states, people and their ratification assemblies with the stark choice of "Take it or leave it". That might be hard to sell.

The "Parties" that formed with respect to the above issues ranged from those strongly supportive of the Constitution as written to those unalterably opposed to ratification. With some over simplification, they might be described as follows

* Arch-Federalists (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Henry Knox) who supported ratification of the Constitution as written. This group may have also hoped to create a strong national government, even at the expense of the power of the states, perhaps even to the extent of eventually merging the states into a single republic (although this could hardly be called "federal")

* Federalists (James Madison) Ratify the Constitution as written with power vested in both the federal government and the states. Some members of this group also favored a federal power to veto state laws and objected to the equal representation of states in the senate.

* Moderates (Edmund Randolph) Seek modifications to the Constitution, including a Bill of Rights, prior to ratification, but support ratification even if the modifications are not included.

* Anti-Federalists (Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, Elbridge Gerry) Support ratification after appropriate amendments are made to the Constitution. Examples include Add a Bill of Rights, enhance the representation of the voters by expanding the size of the Congress, curtail the powers of Congress and the federal judiciary.

* Arch Anti-Federalists (Patrick Henry, Luther Martin, Robert Yates and John Lansing) Reject the Constitution. Keep the Articles of Confederation as the basis of the federal government, perhaps with some minor changes. Structure the Federal Government as an agreement among the states with the federal government having no power over the people. Only the states would have power (taxes, civil law, criminal law) over the people. The states would have equal votes in all parts of the federal government (like the current Senate, unlike the current House of Representatives).

The two most interesting state Ratification Conventions were those held in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Pennsylvania Federalists made a vigorous effort (too vigorous, in fact) to become the first state to ratify the constitution. To speed ratification through the assembly, they refused to allow entries into the official records of any dissent to ratification and restricted distribution of the text of the constitution to parts of the state that were reliably pro-ratification. Not surprisingly, these tactics energized the opposition in Western Pennsylvania who, ironically, belonged to the state's "Constitutional Party", which had been formed a few years earlier to support the ratification of the Pennsylvania state constitution. These strong-arm tactics greatly prolonged the assembly's deliberations, allowing Delaware to become the "first state". Delaware's approval was a foregone conclusion since the constitution would prohibit Pennsylvania from taxing Delaware on imports entering the country through the port of Philadelphia and then shipped to Delaware.

The Virginia Convention was significant in the number of prominent leaders and thinkers who participated James Madison, James Monroe, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Edmund Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, and Henry ("Light Horse Harry") Lee were all present. Absent, but still highly influential via their extensive contact with Convention delegates, were Thomas Jefferson (serving as ambassador to France) and George Washington.

As we all know, the Constitution was ratified and a Bill of Rights was soon added in the form of the first 10 amendments. They have both served us well for two plus centuries.

The wonderful thing about reading history is that there is no end to the possibilities for further research. Reading Ratification raised two questions that linger in my mind, but are clearly beyond the scope of the book

1. Could the US have survived the foreign challenges from Britain, Spain, and France that arose in next decades if the Constitution had been rejected? The national government under the Articles of Confederation was probably too weak to deal with these challenges. For details of these foreign challenges, see my reviews of the several books by Samuel Flagg Bemis (Jay's Treaty, Pinckney's Treaty, and John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy).

2. What were the intentions of the authors of the Constitution regarding states' rights and state secession? In addition to the obvious example of the Civil War, consider the earlier examples of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 which declared the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional and void, the Hartford Convention of 1814-15 in which the New England states debated secession as a response to their opposition to the War of 1812, and the nullification of the "Tariff of Abominations" by South Carolina in 1832. The Civil War put a final answer to these issues in place, but it did not clarify the intentions of the founding fathers.
This is a magnificent history of what was the most famous and most consequential debate in the long story of the American republic. The argument, which wound its way through each of the original 13 colonies, was plainly about the method and structure of governing a diverse population, which had only recently defeated the British army and navy and which now needed to construct the grand design of the American republic. This was no easy task. Differences were wide how were the rights and habits of the individual states to be blended into a national government? How could the interests of each citizen be represented in a national congress? How much power should the central government have relative to the power of the separate states?

The 13 colonies had just been through an enormously exhausting war. Britain was defeated, but barely. The French navy, anxious to avenge centuries of dealing with Britain’s superior naval forces, was critical in the final stage of the colonies’ revolt against British rule. But the colonies were quite different in many ways. Their economies ranged from cotton and tobacco in the south to the beginnings of an industrial revolution in the north. These differences shaped quite different points of view as the debate wound through basic concepts of centralized power, the need for checks and balances within the evolving system of government, the desire for a clear listing of basic rights protecting the individual from what would be a central government.

The document itself was only about 4,000 words. The amendments, now numbering 27, were far shorter. And this is the document that governs the American people. The story of the arguments over its basic tenets is, in a very real sense, critical to understanding the way our system works.
Pauline Maier has done a marvelous job in two major respects first, she has presented the arguments for and against each of the major concepts contained in the Constitution; only through these arguments can we grasp the importance of each of these concepts. Second, she has organized the history in a way that we can grasp the building momentum, state by state, for supporting the Constitution.

This is difficult history since it is mainly a history of ideas, not major battles, not a history of a brilliant individual. But it is at the essence of who we Americans are as a people. And here we are, 230 years after the drafting of this marvelous document, still governed by its basic concepts.