Ratification: HIST 370 (Terzian)

In thirteen essays-one on each state-noted historians provide a fascinating picture of the political process by which competing interests and ideas formed the Constitution.

This documentary series is a research tool of remarkable power, an unrivaled reference work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the Constitution. The volumes are encyclopedic, consisting of manuscript and printed documents-contemporary newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets-compiled from hundreds of sources, copiously annotated, thoroughly indexed, and often accompanied by microfiche supplements.

Ratification chronicles the pivotal moments and key figures in transforming the US Constitution from an idea into a transformational document and the Constitutional Convention into a working government. When the delegates left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September 1787, the new Constitution they had written was no more than a proposal. Elected conventions in at least nine of the thirteen states would have to ratify it before it could take effect. There was reason to doubt whether that would happen. The document we revere today as the foundation of our country's laws, the cornerstone of our legal system, was hotly disputed at the time. Some Americans denounced the Constitution for threatening the liberty that Americans had won at great cost in the Revolutionary War. One group of fiercely patriotic opponents even burned the document in a raucous public demonstration on the Fourth of July. In this splendid new history, Pauline Maier tells the dramatic story of the yearlong battle over ratification that brought such famous founders as Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and Henry together with less well-known Americans who sometimes eloquently and always passionately expressed their hopes and fears for their new country. Men argued in taverns and coffeehouses; women joined the debate in their parlors; broadsides and newspaper stories advocated various points of view and excoriated others. In small towns and counties across the country people read the document carefully and knew it well. Americans seized the opportunity to play a role in shaping the new nation. Then the ratifying conventions chosen by "We the People" scrutinized and debated the Constitution clause by clause. Although many books have been written about the Constitutional Convention, this is the first major history of ratification. It draws on a vast new collection of documents and tells the story with masterful attention to detail in a dynamic narrative. Each state's experience was different, and Maier gives each its due even as she focuses on the four critical states of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, whose approval of the Constitution was crucial to its success. The New Yorker Gilbert Livingston called his participation in the ratification convention the greatest transaction of his life. interpretation. Ratification is the story of the founding drama of our nation, superbly told in a history that transports readers back more than two centuries to reveal the convictions and aspirations on which our country was built.

In September 1787 the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia proposed a new Federal Constitution to replace the beleaguered Articles of Confederation. Each state then had to call a convention of its own to vote on ratification. Pennsylvania, like many states, was deeply divided over the new constitution. For six months Federalists and Antifederalists fought a bitter and, on occasion, violent political battle, with the Federalists ultimately prevailing. In this detailed study of Pennsylvania, the first in fifty years, Owen S. Ireland argues that the overwhelming majority of voters in Pennsylvania favored ratification. While many modern views of the ratification conflict in America explain the Federalist success as a victory of the "patrician" minority over the "plebeian" majority, Ireland finds that political divisions were based less on class, sectional, and occupational differences than on partisan attachments rooted in religious and ethnic conflicts. The state Constitutionalist party, dominated by Presbyterians, opposed ratification, while the Anglican-led Republicans supported it. Voters from Scots-Irish and German Reformed backgrounds joined the Antifederalists, and those from virtually every other ethnic and religious group supported the Federalists.

The Writing and Ratification of the U.S. Constitution: Practical Virtue in Action examines the events surrounding the development of the U.S. Constitution. Setting these events within the context of the colonial conflict with Britain and the experience with state constitutions under the Articles of Confederation, John R. Vile discusses the delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the major plans and proposals that delegates offered, and the arguments that delegates made both in the Convention and in subsequent state ratifying debates that ultimately led to the adoption of the U.S. Bill of Rights. Vile contends that the Convention and subsequent ratifying conventions were not mere exercises in political theory but practical attempts to formulate a workable government that all the states would ratify. Focusing chiefly on records of debates at the Convention, the book is a legal brief, identifying key facts, issues, arguments, and compromises, and providing a unique window into the contestation surrounding this keystone American political moment.