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A review by bupdaddy
Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution by Woody Holton
5.0
I didn't pick this up expecting an argument to entirely shift the paradigm of why the constitution came about, and what the framers were trying to accomplish, but that's what I got. I just ran into this title somewhere and thought I had never read much about the period between when the Revolutionary War ended and when the constitution was ratified.
I think the most convincing and engaging part of the book is in his analysis of how the framers combined what they wanted in the document with slick ways to make it palatable to Joe Yankee Doodle - we don't need to say the federal judicial system can strike down state laws, we just need to say federal law is higher than state law, and let John Marshall spell it out later in Marbury versus Madison. We don't need to point out that the members of the House of Representatives will only be in Washington part time, while the senate is there most of the time; it's just understood. And we don't need to say that we're trying to keep representatives from having to cater to every constituent's whim, we'll just increase the number of constituents until there is a leveling effect that only the most urban, dense districts could organize citizens well enough to overcome.
And money. So much of the constitution had to solve the problem of how badly the individual states had messed up monetary policy. You couldn't borrow a nickel in the 1780's because real money was so scarce and states were too happy to print up worthless paper.
Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties? That's aftermarket bells and whistles to get America to buy the car. Want to sort of slip in the fact that we intend to have the feds assume all state debt from the war? Put in some boring boilerplate sounding language, call it Article VI, and maybe nobody will notice.
These guys knew how to take an excess of democracy away from populists, and sell something that could fix the economic mess of the 1780's and by the way make a Republic that would last.
I think the most convincing and engaging part of the book is in his analysis of how the framers combined what they wanted in the document with slick ways to make it palatable to Joe Yankee Doodle - we don't need to say the federal judicial system can strike down state laws, we just need to say federal law is higher than state law, and let John Marshall spell it out later in Marbury versus Madison. We don't need to point out that the members of the House of Representatives will only be in Washington part time, while the senate is there most of the time; it's just understood. And we don't need to say that we're trying to keep representatives from having to cater to every constituent's whim, we'll just increase the number of constituents until there is a leveling effect that only the most urban, dense districts could organize citizens well enough to overcome.
And money. So much of the constitution had to solve the problem of how badly the individual states had messed up monetary policy. You couldn't borrow a nickel in the 1780's because real money was so scarce and states were too happy to print up worthless paper.
Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties? That's aftermarket bells and whistles to get America to buy the car. Want to sort of slip in the fact that we intend to have the feds assume all state debt from the war? Put in some boring boilerplate sounding language, call it Article VI, and maybe nobody will notice.
These guys knew how to take an excess of democracy away from populists, and sell something that could fix the economic mess of the 1780's and by the way make a Republic that would last.