Customer Reviews

The Debate on the Constitution : Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification : Part One, September 1787-February 1788 (Library of America)

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Editor Bernard Bailyn has assembled a first-rate collection of letters, circulars, pamphlets, speeches, and what would be the colonial equivalent of modern op-ed pieces that allows today's readers to witness the founding of a government through the eyes of (and with the voices of) those who were really there. But don't be fooled into thinking this is going to be the stilted, polite prose that often belongs to 18th century philosophers or debaters. Many of the pieces Bailyn has selected are remakrkably spry and teeming with understated wit.

Those who think that mud-slinging, negative campaigning, and assaults on the integrity of the opponent are modern day creations may be surprised to see that those in the 18th century could be just as nitpicky, petty, and ascerbic as their present day decendants -- and yet still remain surprisingly gentlemanly about the whole thing. Some letter writers absolutely seethe with irritation at their opposition, and by presenting his debaters in roughly chronological order, Bailyn ensures that for every "Oh yeah?" uttered by a Federalist, there will soon be a responsive "Yeah!" from the anti-Federalist side. It all makes for lively and informative reading, and one wonders if such a critical debate could be carried out with such manners in today's media.

It should come as no surprise that most of the Hamilton-Madison-Jay Federalist Papers are in here, as are the level-headed, persuasive anti-Federalist arguments of James Wilson and George Mason. But the real jewels in these volumes lie in the thoughtful and frank correspondence that passed back and forth between not only the Major Players, but also between some of the lesser-known writers, who make their cases for or against the Constitution with genuine passion and conviction.

Bailyn wisely leaves the spin to the writers themselves, but when he does step in, Bailyn is a most helpful editor, and the final 240 pages contain short biographies of every writer (or letter recipient) in the book, an informative chronology of events (and Bailyn makes sure readers have a perspective for the debates in this book by starting the chronology in 1774, some 13 years before the first words in this book were spoken), and competent notes on the text to help readers unfamiliar with some of the players or events keep everything sorted out.

Even though we all have the luxury of knowing that Everything Came Out All Right In The End -- the Constitution was ratified -- there is still quite a bit of drama here, particularly in the debates in the State Ratifying Conventions, which are carried out with suitable handwringing and bluster on both sides. Appropriately, then, the final piece in here is the dramatic speech the previously skeptical John Hancock delivered in the Massachusetts convention, informing his colleagues he would, indeed, vote for ratification. Hancock's words are as stirring now as they were then -- but I'll let you read them for yourself.

If you have the opportunity, purchase both Volume I and Volume II together. Not only will you get the complete debates (Volume I ends in February 1788; volume II is needed to make it to August), but you'll also get one of the Library of America's typically attractive slip-cases. It's a little more expensive, but worth it.

Part one opens with Benjamin Franklin's speech at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, September 17,1787. Two pages long, this speech and all the others that follow, are short, easy to read and in tolerably modern english. Both sides of the argument are presented, not just the federalist opinion but also the anti-federalist. Many concerns the anti-federalist writers had have proven true. We have created an aristocracy. We do have trouble with our standing peace time army being used to oppress the citizenry. Thank God they had the forsight to require the inclusion of a written bill of rights. These books are required reading for every educated citizen. Quit reading my review and place these books in your shopping basket right now

Study of the Federalist Papers, of course included in this two volume series, is a conduit for understanding the American ethic. When the Federalist Papers are viewed as included in this chronological deliberation between the Federalists and Antifederalists, they become even more profound than the enormous depth they can achieve when read alone. The concerns of Brutus and Agrippa are answered, the repititive call for a 'Bill of Rights' revealed. Madison wrote to Jefferson in 1825 defining the Federalist Papers as 'may fairly enough be regarded as the most authentic exposition of the text of the federal constituion, as understood by the Body which prepared & the authority which accepted it.' The enormous insight gained from tracking the arguments and concerns of the proposed Constituion , and the responses of the Federalist cannot be easily estimated, yet the result is a much more informed conscience of the American experience. Madison in the same letter mentioned above stated that Federalist Essays did not foresee all the misconstructions which to that date had occured, nor prevent some it did foresee. For the concerned and deliberate citizen of today many of these issues remain, issues such as Federalism are current topics and all too often the opinions of the few become the conscience of the many, examining these volume will do much to alleviate this vexing condition. More alarming is the realization that many of the fears of the Antifederalists have become a reality in todays polity. An excellent and comprehensive collection thank you Bernard Bailyn.

I've gathered other collections (i.e., The Federalist Paper, Constitutional Debates) over the years, but this collection (along with Volume 2) is by far the most comprehensive yet affordable collection to date. Given the fact Bernard Bailyn compiled the contents and wrote the background material, the reader can rest assured that a distinguished historian is behind these endeavors. Bailyn's commitment to detail and analysis of primary sources has always been one of his hallmarks. He continues that commitment in these two volumes.

There is more material here than the average person probably ever knew existed regarding the constitutional debates. Letters, newspaper articles, formal treatises, and speeches all provide the documentation. Bailyn wants to show the depth and richness of the discussion, which varies from those who feared loss of personal liberty to those ready to embrace the document. Anyone who picks up these volumes will come away with an idea of how complex the constitution really is - that it will never be all things to all people, but it does ground our national identity. It becomes the task of each succeeding generation to uphold the tradition yet strive to assure the Constitution carries out its intended purpose. Obviously this is no small feat to be taken lightly.

The books are arranged chronologically, more or less, divided into subsections. The reader will get the broad spectrum of constitutional debates (the Federalist Papers are included, the "antifederalist papers" are included) as are the fears, assurances, and the entire range of human emotion regarding the Constitution are all there for the reader to peruse.

The only spoiler I offer is the peculiar selection of a Benjamin Franklin letter as the very first entry of the set. Franklin fears the Constitution yet is willing to embrace it just the same. In a way, this might be the quintessential document of the entire collection as all Americans have reason to heed Franklin's concerns.

"The Debate on the Constitution" is a wealth of primary source material for true students of U.S. History. Caveat emptor though. If you fancy yourself an armchair historian because you've read a few of David McCullough's readable histories, then you may find yourself overwhelmed when you try to tackle this collection of circulars, speeches, and articles. To truly appreciate the intellect imbued in many of these passages, one should probably have a background in Hume, Montesquieu, Locke, Blackstone and a host of others. If you read this volume and cannot grasp the beauty of Madison's "The Federalist X" or the sheer logical brilliance of Hamilton's "The Federalist XXXII - XXXIII," then you may need to give yourself a primer on the theoretical underpinnings of colonial history before you digest the rest of this work.

What Bailyn does collect here is not to be ignored. There are very few omissions that one should go out and hunt down in order to see the entire effort of controverting the nascent Constitution. If you find yourself siding with George Mason and James Monroe more often than James Wilson and Alexander Hamilton, then it would behoove you to pick up the entire collected works of the anti federalists, but it is not necessary to get a thorough panoramic of the debate.

On the negative side (small negative side, mind you), Bailyn uses a format that I have never enjoyed for works of this length: endnotes rather than footnotes. I have studied formative U.S. history for over a decade, and I still needed to read several of the notes. Most readers should read all of the notes. Therein lies the problem. One has to flip 600-700 pages forward and backwards in order to find the relevant notes, and do the same thing again if one wants to read the brief biography of a lesser know writer. Had Bailyn used the footnote format, much of this needless page-turning would have been abrogated.

While the format of the notes is a negative, the notes themselves are a big positive, as are the timeline and the biographies. The timeline is an excellent refresher on a number of issues. Mind you, it is not a substitute for actual knowledge of given events, but it does allow the learned reader to refresh a fact or two on a mentioned event. I found it particularly helpful when evaluating the debates in the Pennsylvania Convention. In the entire timeline I was only able to find one issue that I felt serious enough to mention. Bailyn claims on page 1111 that " (the) Peace overture (to France) splits Federalist party into Adams and Hamilton factions" during February of 1799. This is a bit late. The Federalist party was silently split against Adams before he was ever elected and many openly followed Hamilton in his disgust over the Alien and Sedition Acts in the summer of 1798.

Overall, this is first rate and should be on the shelf of any actual U.S. Historian. Having a wealth of primary sources collected together is an invaluable resource. The other shoe does have to drop though. The editors of this tome should have realized that a footnote system would have made this far more readable. This fault is what makes it 4 star rather than 5. I'll have a review of the 2nd volume forthcoming.

Of all the wonderful volumes the Library of America has provided to us, I value the volumes on our founding, our founders and their writings, and the documents from the period to help us understand our history with a richer context. These two volumes provide more than 2,000 pages of letters, newspaper articles, pamphlets, and journals from dozens of writers who made important comments, pro and con, for the ratification of our Constitution. You can get volume 2 here: The Debate on the Constitution : Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification, Part Two: January to August 1788 (Library of America)

The Constitutional Convention was originally assigned to correct a few problems with the Articles of Confederation (which are included along with the Declaration of Independence, the Letter from the Constitutional Convention to the President of Congress, Resolutions of the Convention Concerning the Ratification and Implementation of the Constitution, and The Constitution itself), but the Convention set about creating a new and stronger General Government. What the nature of this should be was debated. According to Madison, some wanted to abolish the states altogether while others wanted a severely constrained General Government. Some wanted the states to have a Constitution check on the actions of the Federal Government.

I was not aware how profoundly much of the population hated the idea of a central government and their reasoning for what might come of it. You know, given where we are today, we can see that their fears were well founded. This debate, for and against the Constitution, provides us with a great deal of context for what our founders meant by our Constitution. Much of the telling of the founding in our public schools, classes, on television, and used as justification by our politicians has almost no basis in fact. They just ignore the realities of what was said, written, and promised to do whatever it is they want to do.

These volumes also provide snapshot biographies of each of the writers whose works are cited in this volume, an article examining the state Constitutions at the time our Constitution was written, and a chronology from the beginning of our Revolutionary War through 1803. We are also given notes on the texts and a most helpful index.

I urge you to get both volumes and study them a bit each day. While it will take you a long time to get through this large volume of material, you will probably, like me, be surprised by what was said, written, and promised. You will have a much bigger foundation you can use to rest your ideas of what our government was supposed to be about and why we need to make big changes in what we have today.

Don't fall for the smear of the Founders that they were old White Men in wigs and knickers who owned slaves. These were all remarkable men, and some were clearly men of genius. And most were surprisingly young at the time of the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention. Some owned slaves and the rest did not. Not all those who owned slaves were for the institution and not all who did not own slaves were against it. Reality tends to be complicated.

Dig in! Learn! Enjoy!

You might also like LOA's collection of contemporary writings on "The American Revolution": The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence (Library of America)

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI

The virtues of this book and its companion (Volume II) are numerous:

- Bailyn is a respected historian whose knowledge of the founding era is surpassed by few. His Ideological Origins of the American Revolution is a gem.
- The book is beautifully bound and attractive on any bookshelf. Another fine specimen from the Library of America.
- The selection of both federalist and anti-federalist writings and speeches, plus their presentation in a logical order, is outstanding.
- The books serve as an outstanding reference volume. It is rare when I read a quote of a particular founding father and cannot find it in context in these volumes.

The list goes on. If you're a student of the era, a lover of beautiful books (take the dust jacket off and present them on your bookshelf!), or merely interested in learning more about America's founding, these volumes can't be beat.

I purchased this two book set many years ago upon their being first published. Today I searched Amazon to see if perhaps they had been published into Kindle format. No luck apparently.

However, this is my chance to give the set five stars, as when first published I studied them in detail and found them absolutely invaluable for an excellent understanding of the pros and cons very eloquently expressed on the question of approving our constitution. The men who are recorded in these works demonstrated an intelligence which would appear to be lacking in our current and recent crop of political leaders. These authors, both for and against exhibited amazing foresight into what could be experienced in our future (from their time frame). And, they were right.

These books should be required reading for our students, and a real understanding of trade offs, risks and benefits of governmental considerations would be made very clear. Of course, such education will never happen.

With few exceptions, anyone reading these works will be surprised at the depth of thinking, regardless of which side of the question they stood, exhibited by these sincere forefathers It's an eye opener. Many of these men were absolutely brilliant and with a sincerity not found today, or in my memory, of our politicians.

Put together by Bernard Bailyn, this splendid collection of writings, thoughts, and passionate assertions are not merely the result of today's historians putting together their "takes" (however valuable) on the subject of something so immense as the formation of the American Constituion; they are made vastly more precious to those of us - the posterity they speak of - because these intense words come to us out of the centuries past direct from the people who were living it. And, through these pages, it's still alive; and reborn to those of us who seek the collective wisdom behind how it came to be. These are the feelings and thoughts of those who were there, before the fact, trying to make sure that everything that could be thought of beforehand was also thought "through" with regards to the serious ramifications of their actions. They were the poster children for "the ounce of prevention being the pound of cure". Liberty and it's preservation was fresh in their minds. Today, we take it for granted; a danger; and they knew that would happen too unless something stood between us and the danger zone. It had to be done right the first time because it was likely going to be impossible to go back and do it again.

Danger was all around them. There was danger in the Federalist proposals, danger in the anti-Federalist counter-arguments. On one hand, after reading these epistles, we can plainly understand the pitfalls feared, because we see the results today. But we also can visualize the need to unite in one central nucleus or risk it all through fragmentation and self-interests of the independent states, under full sovereignty. The old saying "United we Stand, Divided we might Fall" rings true as we absorb. It was indeed, a gathering of our mighty, men (with women behind the scenes) who not only dared to speak frankly, but had the courage to do so as they exercised their newly found - if yet unsanctioned - rights afforded by the hard-won revolt against a monarchy. The reader fully understands the dissenter's fears that centralized power may gradually overwhelm the people's rights just as despotic power had done against it's citizens through so many previous centuries. If these voices had not been there, perhaps no bill of rights would have been developed to ride beside the Constitution; and most of us realize what this oversight might have meant for us today. But we had all of them; and they thought, fought, debated, disagreed, but ultimately, they put aside their differences, came together and "did the work of the people", forming "the more perfect Union" despite (or maybe because of) their human frailties. Unlike what we see happening today. (I just had to throw that in)

Benjamin Franklin's speech is the first one in the collection and perhaps rightly so - his age at the time had to nail him the top spot. He was 83 and I sincerely hope my own mind is as clear at that age even though never as brilliant. Tenche Cox, proponent of the constitution, published through Indepenent Gazetteer in Philadelphia; Cato, an outspoken anti-Federalist, published through New York Journal; and of course, Patrick Henry was taking a lot of heat from the Federalists for his abject refusal of the idea. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton whom I suspect George Washington used as his mouthpiece; Thomas Jefferson, John Adams; and lesser acclaimed writers who were fully as articulate in their delivery of their arguments. It's an incredible journey back to our roots and I can never do justice to all of it - or all of them - here is this review, as it must be read, absorbed and internalized by the individual reader.

Another amazing collection of American brilliance in written speech form, the Library of America's "American Speeches - Political Oratory from the Revolution to the Civil War" is, without doubt, the ultimate premiere of free thought collections you will ever read gathered together all in one spot. If you love American History of the Revolutionary period, and want to be astounded by the calibre of courageous people that lived for us during that time, men and women, creeds and colors alike, blazing trails via the power of words through the virtual untested wilderness of liberty for us, this book will provide an invaluable addition to your library.

I've had both volumes for quite a while, and I wouldn't want to do without them. They are, along with a Bible and a complete Shakespeare, the four books I'd want on that proverbial desert island. Highly recommended. Get both volumes as soon as you can.