A Blog Exploring American History and Politics
Massachusetts Ratifying Convention February 4, 1788 Some governmental systems are engines of tyranny. They may be dressed up as virtuous systems, ones that account for all members of society, but the consequences flowing from the system always speak louder than the rhetoric its leaders spout. At the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, in February 1788, Isaac Backus […]
MoreMassachusetts Ratifying Convention. January 15, 1788 The duration of a term for a member of the House of Representatives was a contentious issue: while some favored one-year terms, others—such as Fisher Ames—advocated for two-year terms. To Ames, a member of the House would be unlikely to learn enough about the country in a year to […]
MoreA Cumberland County Mutual Improvement Society Addresses the Pennsylvania Minority Carlisle Gazette, (Pennsylvania), January 2, 1788 One of the most frequent dooming political predictions that Americans—of any political persuasion—tend to make is that the end of the Republic, and therefore the end of liberty, has come. This prediction even goes back to the debate of […]
More“Publius,” The Federalist XXII [Alexander Hamilton] New-York Packet, December 14, 1787 A well-functioning democracy must be capable of recognizing and dealing with the friction that occurs between the minority and the majority on any given issue. As Alexander Hamilton wrote, in the Federalist XXII, the difference between a vote requiring a simple majority versus a […]
More“Publius,” The Federalist XVI [Alexander Hamilton] New-York Packet, December 4, 1787 When any union or confederacy of states or provinces decide to form a nation, it does so with its citizens knowing that members may “alarm the apprehensions, inflame the passions, and conciliate the good will even” in those states that were not “chargeable with […]
More“Publius,” The Federalist XIV [James Madison] New-York Packet, November 30, 1787 With the draft Constitution having been published for consideration by the residents of each state in 1787 came questions about whether and how the federal government would effectuate its responsibilities given the vast land that the states and territories had already comprised—which James Madison […]
More“Brutus” IV New York Journal, November 29, 1787 At the heart of a healthy democracy is the power for people or their representatives to create, modify, or repeal the laws for those laws inevitably govern nearly all aspects of life. The New York Journal published an article that dissected fair representation in the proposed Constitution: “The […]
More“Cato” V New York Journal, November 22, 1787 Following are excerpts from an anonymous article published in the New York Journal: “To the Citizens of the State of New-York. In my last number I endeavored to prove that the language of the article relative to the establishment of the executive of this new government was vague and inexplicit, that […]
MoreIn 1833, a French engineer, Michel Chevalier, arrived in America and was fascinated by the infrastructure that surrounded him. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: Transformation of America, 1815-1848, 241.
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