Brief Introduction: The Summer of 1787: the Men Who Invented the Constitution was written by David O. Stewart and was published by Simon and Schuster Paperbacks in 2007. The book is 368 pages (including the special features) and the book is an exquisite biography written about the United States Constitutional Convention. David O. Stewart has many qualities to write about the Constitutional Convention because he practiced and studied law in Washington D.C. for more than 25 years. Furthermore, Stewart argued a case before the Supreme Court as a lawyer and he was also a law clerk to Justice Lewis Powell, a member of the Supreme Court. The book includes numerous special features that enables reader to have a more in-depth idea of the Constitutional …show more content…
The book is a narrative that accounts the events of the convention and how the Constitution was drafted and created. The book emphasizes the process and thought behind all the compromises created for the Constitution to be ratified by all the delegates. Furthermore, the book outlines the four months it took to craft the Constitution and the intensity of the delegates at the convention. The Summer of 1787 also mentions almost all the delegates in extreme depth, such as Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, John Dickenson, George Washington and other eminent politicians and lawyers. The book discloses what each delegate did at the convention, what their opinions were and what their beliefs …show more content…
In my opinion, the most important theme in the book is that people should be able to freely express one's thought and that they should be able to freely change their minds. On page fifty two, Stewart claims, “The second added rule specified that delegates could demand reconsideration of every decision the Convention made. Through the coming months delegates would employ this procedure with exasperating frequency. Difficult questions were never resolved in a single discussion and vote. They came up again and again, even after they apparently had been decided. Variations would be offered on earlier proposals, new and old arguments mustered. Often the previous outcome would hold, but every now and then alliances shifted and the constitutional structure changed. This practice gave the Convention a looping, repetitive quality, but – combined with the rule of secrecy – allowed the delegates to revise their views upon wider consultation and deeper reflection, a luxury both precious and not often afforded to public officials, even in the slower pace of the eighteenth century”(Stewart 52). This proclamation displays the importance the opportunity to change one’s position was cherished throughout the entire convention. The author claims that at the Constitutional Convention, delegates were allowed to rethink and rethink their decisions, placing a firm emphasis on improved and changed ideas. By
The Summer of 1787 was written by David O. Stewart as a historical, non-fiction recount of the events leading to the Constitutions adoption hundreds of years ago. David O. Stewart is extremely qualified to put together such a book. Mr. Stewart is a prolific author in matters of politics and history. In addition, Mr. Stewart studied law at Yale, a highly praised institution. From his studies in modern law to reading all 500 pages of James Madison’s notes from the constitutional convention, Mr. Stewart has the motivation and intelligence to effectively narrate the time before the constitutions implementation.
There, these delegates constructed what would be the United States Constitution. Miracle at Philadelphia is a book written by Catherine Drinker Bowden’s telling of the First Constitutional
“The Framers of the Constitution and the ‘Genius’ of the People” written by Alfred E. Young is an article which was originally written in a newspaper called In These Times. In his article he explains the process the delegates went through at the constitutional convention and how revolutionary this moment in our history was. They were the first to form a totally new form of government and to do it in a way that didn’t involve much dispute. Delegates were originally called to revise the Article of Confederation but instead they decided to frame and entirely new document, the Constitution. The Framers wanted to create something completely unlike the monarchy they came from.
A meeting was held during 1787 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known as the “Constitutional Convention”. This was to revise the "Articles of Confederation". This meeting had fifty-five men and each one of them had their own role to play. Two men that went stood up for themselves, the people, and some states.
Due to the pathetic turnout of only 6 representatives it became clear that the limitations of the Articles of Confederation were crippling the development of the new country. In 1787 delegates gathered in Philadelphia in hopes to revise the Articles of Confederation. What ended up happening were not minor revisions or tweaks, a completely new charter of the government was drafted, now known as the Constitution. These changes brought fear to some, such as Rawlin Lowndes. He debated the adoption of the federal constitution, suggesting “Would it not be better to add strength to the old Confederation, instead of hastily adopting another” (Doc H).
A constitution is a document with principles upon which the state or organization must be governed by. In Philadelphia, a convention took place known as the Constitutional Convention on May 25. During the convention, the Founding Fathers of the United States created a framework for which the government should follow. On September 17, 1787, this document was signed, now known as the Constitution of the United States of America. After the Constitution was made a national disagreement took place discussing whether the Constitution was proslavery or antislavery.
This shows that there was a balance that had to be found. Some of the topics they debated on where topics such as the president 's salary and how to prevent against sectional favoritism. The largest topic, however, was on how the president should be elected. One of the first struggles the men encountered was on who should elect the president. There were two sides, the supporters of the legislative branch electing the president and the supporters of popular vote.
After a fiercely fought revolution, the newly independent American nation struggled to establish a concrete government amidst an influx of opposing ideologies. Loosely tied together by the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen sovereign states were far from united. As growing schisms in American society became apparent, an array of esteemed, prominent American men united in 1787 to form the basis of the United States government: the Constitution. Among the most eminent members of this convention were Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. These men, held to an almost godly stature, defined the future of the nation; but were their intentions as honest as they seemed?
After completing the process of the Constitutional Convention, I have learned an exceptional amount of information that can be used to take on the real world. During the convention there were many factors that impacted how the convention was run, and what choices were made. The preliminary discussion topics, the lessons learned, and the factions represented in the convention all modified the ending result. Each of the preliminary discussions with other factions prior to the convention were very important to the final decisions made. Slavery, a very important topic during the convention, was one such example that branched out into other different issues including slave trade and the abolishment of slavery.
The Constitutional Convention occurred from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The tradition was held to address issues in overseeing the United States, which had been working under the Articles of Confederation taking after freedom from Great Britain. In spite of the fact that the tradition was expected to modify the Articles of Confederation, the aim from the beginning of a number of its defenders, boss among them James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was to make another government as opposed to settle the current one. The agents chose George Washington to direct the tradition. The aftereffect of the tradition was the United States Constitution, setting the tradition among the hugest occasions in the historical backdrop
This new document, known today as the Constitution of the United States, provided a framework for our government that we still follow to this day (Congress for Kids 5). On May 25, 1787 until September 17, 1787, delegates from twelve of the thirteen states met in the State House in Philadelphia (Blum 120). This gathering, called the
The main purpose of this chapter is to determine the Founding Fathers’ motives for creating the Constitution by analyzing a secondary source by Woody Holton, and several primary sources. Frist, I will begin with the secondary source, “Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution” by Woody Holton. Mr. Holton’s main purpose was to locate the motivation behind the Constitution in developments in the states (page 90). Mr. Holton addressed several grievances for possible motives of the Founding Fathers’. First, the excessive democracy that acerbated many Americans, the runaway inflation caused by the farmers who were allowed to satisfy their debt to creditors with property and good instead of hard currency, and the Revolutionary War that
Redmond Peiro Ms. Smith Maryland State Constitution Paper 9 February, 2016 In the months preceding the American Revolution, a convention was held in Annapolis between a number of Maryland’s most powerful men in which to discuss the development of a new government. In addition to this, they sent representatives to the Continental Congress to finalize pre-war preparations. On July 3, 1776 the convention agreed that a new group was to be created to draw up their first state constitution as the old ad hoc government structure was considered inadequate. “That all government of right originates from the people, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole.”
In his article “The Federal Constitution and the Defects of The Confederation”, Max Farrand delves back into the 1700s in order to examine the creation of the Constitution and even moreso the reasons behind its inception. The Constitutional Convention was a very interesting event that has always had some historical mystery and even some common ignorance around what happened at the convention. As a way to inform the people reading this articles of the intentions of the convention, Farrand formulates his thesis around this idea of how and why the Constitution was made. On the first page of his article, he states, “That the Constitution was framed because of the defects in the Articles of Confederation is universally accepted, but it does not
Why was the Constitution a controversial document even as it was being written? Established in 1787 The Constitution was a controversial document because it was a document that could both solve the nation’s hardships and warped the Republican foundation. The Constitution on one hand would give the people a voice and the other would control the nation through a monarchy system. One of the controversies that arose from the creation of the Constitution was the question of management of commerce.