First I will review the two definitive books on how the U.S. Constitution was crafted in 1787. They are fascinating and dramatic; neither is a flag-waving glorification of the document or the men who made it. Below those, I will review books on ratification (1787-88) and the Bill of Rights (1789-91).
Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution By Richard Beeman Random House 2009, 544 pages
In May 1787, in an atmosphere of crisis due to the failure of the Articles of Confederation, delegates met in Philadelphia to design a radically new form of government.
Beeman gives a day-by-day account of the convention, where the framers were under great pressure to succeed, and to do so in total secrecy because their mission was seditious under the Articles of Confederation. Amid tensions between opposing interests, agreements were made, compromises were reached, votes taken, and a work of genius—the world’s longest-lived written national constitution—emerged.
Were it not for the president of the convention, the dignified military hero George Washington, the competing interests might not have been persuaded to collaborate and compromise with their opponents.
Publishers Weekly said, “Beeman gives each decision, each vote, the weight it deserves and, in brief sketches, brings the delegates alive.”
Miracle At Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May-September 1787 By Catherine Drinker Bowen Back Bay Books, 1986 (original edition 1966), 346 pages
Bowen draws much of her information from notes and journals of the framers, especially James Madison. It contains vivid descriptions of many founding fathers, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris.
After the Constitution was drafted and approved by the Constitutional Convention in 1787, it still had to be ratified by at least nine of the 13 states. Ratification was not a slam dunk; it turned out to be an intense and vitriolic struggle, especially in Virginia and New York. Failure to ratify the Constitution and form a new government may have resulted in the bankruptcy and/or dissolution of the union, intensified interstate conflict, and vulnerability to foreign attacks.
Triumvirate: The Story of the Unlikely Alliance That Saved the Constitution and United the Nation By Bruce Chadwick Sourcebooks, 2010, 352 pages
James Madison (one of the primary authors of the new Constitution, which replaced the Articles of Confederation), Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay teamed up to campaign vigorously for ratification from late 1787 through June 1788. Among other lobbying efforts, this “triumvirate” authored 85 essays that were later compiled in The Federalist Papers.
The Articles of Confederation did not allow the federal government to collect taxes directly from citizens, raise a standing army to defend the country (relying instead on state militias), or establish a unified economy. The Articles did not create an executive branch of government to serve as a check upon the power of Congress. And amending the Articles was almost impossible. The new Constitution cured those deficiencies.
Anti-Federalists—Virginia legislator Patrick Henry and New York governor George Clinton chiefly among them—argued that the Constitution would concentrate too much power with the central government, taking sovereignty from the states and fostering tyranny; the blood that was lost in the Revolution, in a fight for liberty, would be wasted. The new Constitution also lacked a bill of rights, which seven of the 13 state constitutions included. The Federalists struggled to overcome these fears.
Triumvirate captures the drama and intrigue surrounding the effort by the Federalists to get all 13 states, not just the required nine, to ratify the Constitution. If New York or Virginia were to vote against ratification (even after New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify), the young union might splinter into smaller confederations. Most seriously, if Virginia failed to ratify, the country would be deprived of the hero whom everyone expected would be the first president. George Washington did, in fact, exert tremendous behind-the-scenes influence on behalf of the triumvirate in the ratification struggle. (Washington did not participate in the state ratification convention, lest he be perceived as campaigning for president, which he considered a conflict of interest.)
Madison, Hamilton, and Jay were brilliant, talented, and valiant men. Chadwick gives each a mini-biography in Triumvirate. Their alliance was not unlikely, as the book’s subtitle claims.
Triumvirate is frequently repetitive and inelegantly written. But it offers a broad perspective on the struggle for ratification and the political division that still defines federalism in America.
James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights By Richard Labunski Oxford University Press, 2008, 352 pages
The first 30 percent of Labunski’s book covers the ratification of the Constitution in Virginia in 1788, where the soft-spoken but brilliantly logical Madison squared off against the histrionic Patrick Henry.
That’s followed by Madison’s candidacy for U.S. Senate in 1789 and, after he lost that race, for the U.S. House of Representatives. The district in which he ran for office was gerrymandered by Henry to make it almost impossible for Madison to win. Nevertheless, Madison beat his friend (and future successor in the Presidency) James Monroe for the seat in the House. To get elected to Congress, he essentially had to pledge that he would lead Congress in adding a bill of rights to preserve individual liberty.
After the election, Madison persuaded another friend, George Washington, to support a bill of rights in his inaugural address to Congress in April 1789.
The Amendments in Congress
When the first Congress met, after a few weeks of administrative work, Madison shepherded the amendments through the House. Some Federalists felt the bill of rights was unnecessary because the Constitution gave the government no express power to abridge individual rights. But as some moderate Federalists admitted, the “necessary and proper” clause in Article I did create a loophole that a tyrant might exploit. Many anti-Federalists opposed any legislation regarding a bill of rights, calling instead for a second constitutional convention to restore sovereignty to the states.
Madison compiled a list of individual rights and protections from the seven state constitutions that provided for such limitations on the power of the state governments, and from those ratifying conventions that had submitted them in 1788 as recommendations for the first Congress. Legislators debated, adapted, condensed, and weeded that list down to 12 amendments. For example, the Senate combined two House amendments related to (a) freedom of religion and (b) freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and petition into one, which became the first amendment. The Senate also weakened the House’s ban on establishment of religion. Congress wrestled over whether to insert amendments variously into the body of the constitution or to attach them all together at the end.
Madison served on the conference committee that resolved the differences between the House and Senate bills. At Madison’s insistence, the establishment clause was revived in the first amendment. In the final vote in each house, anti-Federalists opposed the amendments as being too narrow and weak (they also wanted to add an amendment curbing direct taxation), but Congress finally achieved the two-thirds super-majority required to pass the bill. President Washington submitted 12 amendments to the states for ratification in October 1789.
The Bill of Rights became effective in 1791 after three-fourths of the 13 states ratified 10 of the 12 amendments.
Labunski, a journalism professor, “fills his book with sonorous oratory and colorful details of 18th-century politicking. The result is a lively look at the rickety early republic and Madison’s great balancing act” (PW).
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