Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas
in the Making of the Constitution  (1996)
by Jack N. Rakove

From :
"Rakove reexamines the classic issues that the framers of the Constituion has to solve: federalism, representation, executive power, rights, and the idea that a constitution somehow embodied supreme law. In each of these cases, Original Meanings suggest that Americans of the early Republic held a spectrum of positions, some drawn from the controversial legacy of Anglo-American politics, others reflecting the course of events since 1776, the politics of the Federal Convention, or the spirited public debate that followed.

"Rakove's narration of the story of the great sources of contention also reveals the character of the central actors: George Washington, reserved yet charismatic; James Wilson, brilliant but arrogant; Benjamin Franklin, witty and wise; Roger Sherman, a crabbed speaker but dogged parliamentarian; Alexander Hamilton, the candid iconoclast. By describing the ratification controversy[,] Rakove gives both Federalists and anti-Federalists their due. And throughout he pays close attention to the concerns of James Madison, who went to Philadelphia in the grip of a great passion to remedy the vices of the American political system, and who exerted the greatest influence not only over the entire process of adopting the Constitution, but also over the controversies of interpretation that have continued into our day."

Jack N. Rakove is Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress and James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic.

Of interest . . .
Interview Interview inBooksnotes' transcript archive