Download or read book The Framers Coup written by Michael J. Klarman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them "all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views." One need not deny that the Framers had good intentions in order to believe that they also had interests. Based on prodigious research and told largely through the voices of the participants, Michael Klarman's The Framers' Coup narrates how the Framers' clashing interests shaped the Constitution--and American history itself. The Philadelphia convention could easily have been a failure, and the risk of collapse was always present. Had the convention dissolved, any number of adverse outcomes could have resulted, including civil war or a reversion to monarchy. Not only does Klarman capture the knife's-edge atmosphere of the convention, he populates his narrative with riveting and colorful stories: the rebellion of debtor farmers in Massachusetts; George Washington's uncertainty about whether to attend; Gunning Bedford's threat to turn to a European prince if the small states were denied equal representation in the Senate; slave staters' threats to take their marbles and go home if denied representation for their slaves; Hamilton's quasi-monarchist speech to the convention; and Patrick Henry's herculean efforts to defeat the Constitution in Virginia through demagoguery and conspiracy theories. The Framers' Coup is more than a compendium of great stories, however, and the powerful arguments that feature throughout will reshape our understanding of the nation's founding. Simply put, the Constitutional Convention almost didn't happen, and once it happened, it almost failed. And, even after the convention succeeded, the Constitution it produced almost failed to be ratified. Just as importantly, the Constitution was hardly the product of philosophical reflections by brilliant, disinterested statesmen, but rather ordinary interest group politics. Multiple conflicting interests had a say, from creditors and debtors to city dwellers and backwoodsmen. The upper class overwhelmingly supported the Constitution; many working class colonists were more dubious. Slave states and nonslave states had different perspectives on how well the Constitution served their interests. Ultimately, both the Constitution's content and its ratification process raise troubling questions about democratic legitimacy. The Federalists were eager to avoid full-fledged democratic deliberation over the Constitution, and the document that was ratified was stacked in favor of their preferences. And in terms of substance, the Constitution was a significant departure from the more democratic state constitutions of the 1770s. Definitive and authoritative, The Framers' Coup explains why the Framers preferred such a constitution and how they managed to persuade the country to adopt it. We have lived with the consequences, both positive and negative, ever since.
Download or read book The Framers Coup written by Michael J. Klarman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flaws in the Articles of Confederation -- Economic turmoil in the states and the road to Philadelphia -- The Constitutional Convention -- Slavery and the Constitutional Constitution -- Critics of the Constitution: the Antifederalists -- The ratifying contest -- The Bill of Rights -- Conclusion
Download or read book Constitutional Coup written by Jon D. Michaels and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans hate bureaucracy—though they love the services it provides—and demand that government run like a business. Hence today’s privatization revolution. Jon Michaels shows how the fusion of politics and profits commercializes government and consolidates state power in ways the Constitution’s framers endeavored to disaggregate.
Download or read book United States Constitutional Law written by Paul Rodgers and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great liberties and guarantees of the United States Constitution are stated as general principles, to be perpetuated and reapplied in a changing America. This book provides a basic understanding of Constitutional law, addressing both the history of the U.S. Constitution and each of its individual clauses. It explains the power of the Supreme Court, whereby a bare majority of five justices, each with lifetime tenure, can overrule the president, the Congress, and state and local governments--effectively declaring the rights and obligations of persons and organizations across the land. Referencing more than 950 Supreme Court decisions, the book treats each subject objectively and without opinionated commentary.
Download or read book Founding Fathers written by Melvin Eustace Bradford and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published : A worthy company. Marlborough, N.H. : Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982.
Download or read book The Broken Constitution written by Noah Feldman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution—a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind.” But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In this groundbreaking study, Noah Feldman argues that Lincoln deliberately and recurrently violated the United States’ founding arrangements. When he came to power, it was widely believed that the federal government could not use armed force to prevent a state from seceding. It was also assumed that basic civil liberties could be suspended in a rebellion by Congress but not by the president, and that the federal government had no authority over slavery in states where it existed. As president, Lincoln broke decisively with all these precedents, and effectively rewrote the Constitution’s place in the American system. Before the Civil War, the Constitution was best understood as a compromise pact—a rough and ready deal between states that allowed the Union to form and function. After Lincoln, the Constitution came to be seen as a sacred text—a transcendent statement of the nation’s highest ideals. The Broken Constitution is the first book to tell the story of how Lincoln broke the Constitution in order to remake it. To do so, it offers a riveting narrative of his constitutional choices and how he made them—and places Lincoln in the rich context of thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln’s Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues. Includes 8 Pages of Black-and-White Illustrations
Download or read book Plain Honest Men written by Richard Beeman and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2010-02-09 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 1787, in an atmosphere of crisis, delegates met in Philadelphia to design a radically new form of government. Distinguished historian Richard Beeman captures as never before the dynamic of the debate and the characters of the men who labored that historic summer. Virtually all of the issues in dispute—the extent of presidential power, the nature of federalism, and, most explosive of all, the role of slavery—have continued to provoke conflict throughout our nation's history. This unprecedented book takes readers behind the scenes to show how the world's most enduring constitution was forged through conflict, compromise, and fragile consensus. As Gouverneur Morris, delegate of Pennsylvania, noted: "While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men."
Download or read book U S Constitution For Beginners written by Steve Bachmann and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a combination of witty text and illustrations U.S. Constitution For Beginners take a tongue-in-cheek look at America’s most critical legal document. Author and lawyer Steve Bachmann has written a text that touches on the document’s history beginning with the Magna Carta. He then traces the events that precipitated its writing, the personalities and motives of the people who create it, and its use and misuses since ratification. U.S. Constitution For Beginners analyzes crucial elements of this binding set of principles and ponders the future of the Constitution as well as the role of American citizens. Though hotly debated and constantly reinterpreted, the Constitution has survived wars, industrialization, expansion and politicians.
Download or read book Our Declaration A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality written by Danielle Allen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, Society of American Historians “A tour de force. . . . No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.”—Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America’s cardinal text” (David M. Kennedy).
Download or read book Signers of the Constitution written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Created by the National Park Service, this Web site is an online version of a booklet on historic places commemorating the signing of the Constitution. It features historical background information, biographical profiles, a survey of historic sites related to its drafting and signing, and much more.
Download or read book The Bill of Rights written by Carol Berkin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Narrative, celebratory history at its purest” (Publishers Weekly)—the real story of how the Bill of Rights came to be: a vivid account of political strategy, big egos, and the partisan interests that set the terms of the ongoing contest between the federal government and the states. Those who argue that the Bill of Rights reflects the founding fathers’ “original intent” are wrong. The Bill of Rights was actually a brilliant political act executed by James Madison to preserve the Constitution, the federal government, and the latter’s authority over the states. In the skilled hands of award-winning historian Carol Berkin, the story of the founders’ fight over the Bill of Rights comes alive in a drama full of partisanship, clashing egos, and cunning manipulation. In 1789, the nation faced a great divide around a question still unanswered today: should broad power and authority reside in the federal government or should it reside in state governments? The Bill of Rights, from protecting religious freedom to the people’s right to bear arms, was a political ploy first and a matter of principle second. The truth of how and why Madison came to devise this plan, the debates it caused in the Congress, and its ultimate success is more engrossing than any of the myths that shroud our national beginnings. The debate over the Bill of Rights still continues through many Supreme Court decisions. By pulling back the curtain on the short-sighted and self-interested intentions of the founding fathers, Berkin reveals the anxiety many felt that the new federal government might not survive—and shows that the true “original intent” of the Bill of Rights was simply to oppose the Antifederalists who hoped to diminish the government’s powers. This book is “a highly readable American history lesson that provides a deeper understanding of the Bill of Rights, the fears that generated it, and the miracle of the amendments” (Kirkus Reviews).
Download or read book A Brilliant Solution written by Carol Berkin and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting all the original documents and using her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century history and politics, Carol Berkin takes a fresh look at the men who framed the Constitution, the issues they faced, and the times they lived in. Berkin transports the reader into the hearts and minds of the founders, exposing their fears and their limited expectations of success.
Download or read book The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America written by United States and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2002 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The First Constitution written by Joshua Mawhorter and published by . This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the name of the first constitution of the American States? I ask this question year to year to start of the introduction to the Articles of Confederation because this tricky question confuses many and makes the point that the Constitution was not the original written agreement between the American States. The time period of the Articles of Confederation-between the ending of the American Revolution to the ratification of the Constitution by the States-is, without doubt, the most overlooked and misunderstood time period of American history. A fellow history teacher briefly described his next few lessons through the period of the American Revolution to the Constitution as follows, "The Revolution ended, then the Articles were accepted and it sucked, then they changed to the Constitution." While this was just an off-hand statement made to describe a plan in a quick sentence by a knowledgeable history teacher, that is the basic impression people have about the Articles of Confederation if they know anything at all. What were the Articles of Confederation? Were they needed (especially to win the Revolution)? Why were they replaced?
Download or read book An Argument Open to All written by Sanford Levinson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In An Argument Open to All, renowned legal scholar Sanford Levinson takes a novel approach to what is perhaps America’s most famous political tract. Rather than concern himself with the authors as historical figures, or how The Federalist helps us understand the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, Levinson examines each essay for the political wisdom it can offer us today. In eighty-five short essays, each keyed to a different essay in The Federalist, he considers such questions as whether present generations can rethink their constitutional arrangements; how much effort we should exert to preserve America’s traditional culture; and whether The Federalist’s arguments even suggest the desirability of world government.
Download or read book Ratification written by Pauline Maier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Guide to the United States Constitution written by Erin Ackerman and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 2018-10-05 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expertly guides readers through the Constitution and its twenty-seven amendments
