The South's Role in the Creation of the Bill of Rights
The South's Role in the Creation of the Bill of Rights

Author: Robert J. Haws

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2010-12-01

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1496801490

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The adoption of the Bill of Rights was the last step in defining the essential elements of American constitutionalism. The process began with the writing of the Constitution, continued through its ratification by the states, and culminated with the adoption of the Bill of Rights. In 1991 the bicentennial of the adoption of the Bill of Rights provided an occasion for examining the origins of this most important statement of individual rights in American history. Published on this anniversary, The South's Role in the Creation of the Bill of Rights sheds light on the paradoxical part the South played in the process of drafting and adopting this document. In cogent essays from the Chancellor's Symposium on Southern History held at the University of Mississippi in 1988, six noted experts in legal, constitutional, and southern history fill a gap in the literature of southern legal history for the period 1787-1791. The southern role is particularly important because political leaders in the South took the lead in promoting a bill of rights and at the same time vociferously defended the right to hold slaves. The essays in this book comprise a complete discussion of the writing and ratification of the Constitution and the adoption of the Bill of Rights in five southern seaboard states. They reveal the interplay of a desire to protect states' rights, a concern for the preservation of individual liberty, and a defensive attitude toward slavery that governed southern attitudes. These concerns dominated constitutional discourse until the Civil War. The South's peculiar “cultural constitutionalism” was first given definition in this period of American history, and as this book reveals, it initiated the process of setting the region apart from the rest of the United States. The events of these years were a necessary first step in establishing a southern regional identity.

The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

Author: Eric Foner

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-09-17

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0393652580

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“Gripping and essential.”—Jesse Wegman, New York Times An authoritative history by the preeminent scholar of the Civil War era, The Second Founding traces the arc of the three foundational Reconstruction amendments from their origins in antebellum activism and adoption amidst intense postwar politics to their virtual nullification by narrow Supreme Court decisions and Jim Crow state laws. Today these amendments remain strong tools for achieving the American ideal of equality, if only we will take them up.

The People’s Constitution
The People’s Constitution

Author: John F. Kowal

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 493

ISBN-13: 1620975629

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The 233-year story of how the American people have taken an imperfect constitution—the product of compromises and an artifact of its time—and made it more democratic Who wrote the Constitution? That’s obvious, we think: fifty-five men in Philadelphia in 1787. But much of the Constitution was actually written later, in a series of twenty-seven amendments enacted over the course of two centuries. The real history of the Constitution is the astonishing story of how subsequent generations have reshaped our founding document amid some of the most colorful, contested, and controversial battles in American political life. It’s a story of how We the People have improved our government’s structure and expanded the scope of our democracy during eras of transformational social change. The People’s Constitution is an elegant, sobering, and masterly account of the evolution of American democracy. From the addition of the Bill of Rights, a promise made to save the Constitution from near certain defeat, to the post–Civil War battle over the Fourteenth Amendment, from the rise and fall of the “noble experiment” of Prohibition to the defeat and resurgence of an Equal Rights Amendment a century in the making, The People’s Constitution is the first book of its kind: a vital guide to America’s national charter, and an alternative history of the continuing struggle to realize the Framers’ promise of a more perfect union.

The Federalist Papers
The Federalist Papers

Author: Alexander Hamilton

Publisher: Read Books Ltd

Published: 2018-08-20

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 1528785878

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Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.

The Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights

Author: Carol Berkin

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1476743819

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“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).

A More Perfect Union
A More Perfect Union

Author:

Publisher: National Archives & Records Administration

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13:

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Reprint. Originally published : Washington, D.C. : National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1978.

Bills of Rights and Decolonization
Bills of Rights and Decolonization

Author: Charles Parkinson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-11-22

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0199231931

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"It presents an alternative perspective on the end of Empire by focusing upon one aspect of constitutional decolonization and the importance of the local legal culture in determining each dependency's constitutional settlement, and provides a series of empirical case studies on the incorporation of human rights instruments into domestic constitutions when negotiated between a state and its dependencies. More generally this book highlights Britain's human rights legacy to its former Empire."--BOOK JACKET.

The Broken Constitution
The Broken Constitution

Author: Noah Feldman

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0374720878

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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

The Bill of Rights and the States
The Bill of Rights and the States

Author: Patrick T. Conley

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 9780945612292

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Fourteen individual state essays elucidate the complexitites of local and regional interests that shaped the debate over individual rights and the eventual adoption of the Bill of Rights.