A Blog Exploring American History and Politics
Independent Journal (New York) January 19, 1788 Engineering a coup can be difficult. Usually, it requires a military to not only lose faith in the civilian government but to organize an overthrowing of that government. Democratic republics fear this prospect as much as any other type of government. Although democratic republics are better suited for […]
MoreJanuary 16, 1788 A government must provide its people—all of its people, varied as they are—with a structure that fosters self-preservation. In the South, for a long stretch of time, that sense of self-preservation was crucial. There was no denying that the slave economy was central to its existence that it was therefore always going […]
MoreMassachusetts Ratifying Convention January 24, 1788 The Constitution empowers Congress to “raise and support Armies” with the limitation that any appropriation of money for raising and supporting armies must be limited to a two-year term (Article I, Section 8, Clause 12). At the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, there was debate as to whether that authority should […]
MoreMassachusetts Ratifying Convention January 21, 1788 A representative democracy requires that elected officials are servants to the people. There must be accountability, and with two-year terms for members of the House of Representatives, four-year terms for Presidents, and six-year terms for Senators, the Constitution has provided voters with the option to rotate their servants every […]
MoreMassachusetts Ratifying Convention January 17, 1788 For those debating the Constitution’s ratification, no detail of the draft document was forgotten. To detractors, like the Honorable Mr. Turner who rose on January 17, 1788 at the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, there were hidden dangers throughout the document. One that he raised was that Congress “may alter the […]
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 […]
MorePennsylvania Ratifying Convention. November 30, 1787. At the Pennsylvania Convention, Robert Whitehill rose to speak about the proposed Constitution including—and perhaps especially—its biggest flaw. To Whitehill, despite the fact that the country’s learned people devised the Constitution, “the defect is in the system itself,—there lies the evil which. no argument can palliate, no sophistry can […]
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