Customer Reviews

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)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unlike the political commentators of the late 20th and early 21st century (watchers of Sunday public affairs programs and AM radio listeners know who they are), the commentators of the 18th century actually had something of substance to say. This was a time when education was rare, but when done was done well. The New American Library does its usual exceptional job in assembling the material in this book including some of the more important selections from the Federalist Papers as well as some of the writings of the anti-Federalists. Here the role of the government and the nature of freedom are really explored. Life was better before politics became about feeling and emotion. Every American should read this book, but only if he wants to really understand the basis of the American experiment.

"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.

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 1 here: 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)

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

Excellent title concerning what was important two hundred years or so in developing a government for our country. Interesting to find out how different today is and how different it was 1787-8!

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.

Excellent Book on the review of the discussion over what was needed to be modified in the constitution before it ratified.