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Not “Three-Fifths of a Person”

What the three-fifths clause meant at ratification.
by Nathaniel C. Green via Commonplace on September 10, 2024
Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist No. 1: Annotated

Alexander Hamilton’s anonymous essay challenged the voting citizens of New York to hold fast to the truth when deciding to ratify (or not) the US Constitution.
by Alexander Hamilton, Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on May 30, 2024
Painting of the drafters if the U.S. Constitution

A Colorblind Compromise?

“Colorblindness,” an ideology that denies race as an organizing principle of the nation’s structural order, reaches back to the drafting of the US Constitution.
by Matthew Wills, Kasey Henricks via JSTOR Daily on September 9, 2022
Painting of the constitutional convention

Federalism and the Founders

The question of how to balance state and national power was perhaps the single most important and most challenging question confronting the early republic.
by Allen C. Guelzo via National Affairs on January 7, 2022
Norman Mailer, left, with Jimmy Breslin, in the garment district of New York during his 1969 race for mayor.

Secessionist City

While New York has yet to break away from the rest of the country, it's not for lack of trying.
by William Hogeland via Paloma Media on December 14, 2021
Luther Martin
partner

For Constitution Day, Let's Toast the Losers of the Convention

Anti-federalist Luther Martin's agenda failed at the Constitutional Convention, but his criticisms of the Founders may still resonate with us today.
by Richard Hall via HNN on September 19, 2021
"JOIN, or DIE" political cartoon with illustration of a severed snake

The Memes That Made Us

The origin story of “one nation, indivisible.”
by Akhil Reed Amar via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 24, 2021
A painting of George Washington during the Whiskey Rebellion.

The Revolutionary Language and Behavior of the Whiskey Rebels

On the continued revolutionary rhetoric and ideology that persisted in America even after the American Revolution.
by Kyler Burd via Journal of the American Revolution on December 10, 2020

The Late Murray Rothbard Takes on the Constitution

A lost volume of American history finds the light of day.
by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel via Reason on April 20, 2020
George Washington is depicted in the 1856 painting "George Washington Addressing the Constitutional Convention" by Junius Brutus Stearns.

‘The President Himself May Be Guilty’: Why Pardons Were Hotly Debated By The Founding Fathers

The Mueller report raised the issue the Constitution’s framers feared in 1787: abuse of presidential power.
by Erick Trickey via Retropolis on April 21, 2019
Title page of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense."
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Anonymous Criticism Helped Make America Great

Trump’s critic is utilizing a practice employed by many of the Founding Fathers to protect truth from power.
by Jordan E. Taylor via Made By History on September 8, 2018

Impeachment, American Style

It’s our democracy’s ultimate weapon for self-defense. But does intense political opposition justify its use?
by Cass R. Sunstein via The New Yorker on September 20, 2017

Were the Framers Democrats?

Review of The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, by Michael J. Klarman.
by Cass R. Sunstein via The New Rambler on October 31, 2016

The Sentimentalizing of Federalist Ten

Ideas about history still prevailing in the liberal resistance to Trump keep pushing us backward.
by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on December 10, 2024
Attendees look at a map of the U.S. electoral college during the Republican National Convention (RNC) near the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.
partner

The Debate That Gave Us the Electoral College

John Dickinson's contributions to the Constitution continue to reverberate today.
by Jane E. Calvert via Made By History on October 18, 2024
Political cartoon of American resistance against British colonial power.

Interposition: A State-Based Constitutional Tool That Might Help Preserve American Democracy

Interposition was a claim that American federalism needed to preserve some balance between state and national authority.
by Christian G. Fritz via Commonplace on June 1, 2023
An American flag stylized as a ball bearing maze.

The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

How our inability to change America’s most important document is deforming our politics and government.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on October 26, 2022
Graphic design of a red, fractured United States on a yellow background

There Is Absolutely Nothing to Support the ‘Independent State Legislature’ Theory

Such a doctrine would be antithetical to the Framers’ intent, and to the text, fundamental design, and architecture of the Constitution.
by J. Michael Luttig via The Atlantic on October 3, 2022
Black and white photo of the “Star-Spangled Banner” flown during the War of 1812, 1914.

A Fiery Gospel

A conversation about changing the American story.
by Lewis H. Lapham, Kermit Roosevelt III via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 19, 2022
President Madison ending the Embargo Act cartoon

James Madison and the Debilitating American Tendency to Make Everything About the Constitution

The U.S. Constitution was the reason for Madison and Hamilton's breakup.
by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on October 11, 2021
Toussaint Louverture proclaiming the Constitution of the Republic of Haiti

Contagious Constitutions

In her new book, Colley shows how written constitutions developed both as a way to further justify rulers and to turn rebellions into legitimate governments.
by Jenny Uglow via New York Review of Books on June 3, 2021
A red gun and blue gun pointing in opposite directions, with flags spelling "We"

Originalism, Divided

The theory has not provided the clarity some of its early proponents had hoped it would.
by Harry Litman via The Atlantic on May 25, 2021

A Definitive Case Against the Electoral College

Why the framers created the Electoral College — and why we need to get rid of it.
by Sean Illing, Jesse Wegman via Vox on July 21, 2020

Washington’s Legacy for American Jews: ‘To Bigotry No Sanction’

In 1790, as the First Amendment was being ratified, George Washington made a promise to American Jews.
by Jed S. Rakoff via New York Review of Books on September 23, 2019

Standing Armies: The Constitutional Debate

Why did Alexander Hamilton and James Madison take up the cause of the very thing that revolutionaries had vehemently opposed?
by Griffin Bovée via Journal of the American Revolution on May 8, 2018

Inside the Founding Fathers’ Debate Over What Constituted an Impeachable Offense

If not for three sparring Virginia delegates, Congress’s power to remove a president would be even more limited.
by Erick Trickey via Smithsonian on October 2, 2017

The Woman Whose Words Inflamed the American Revolution

Mercy Otis Warren used her wit to agitate for independence.
by Erick Trickey via Smithsonian on June 20, 2017

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