What Did the Constitution Mean To Early Americans?

What did the Constitution mean to early Americans? Ostensibly the foundational document of a sovereign American people, the U.S. Constitution affected different kinds of Americans in very different ways. Modern historians have investigated its impact on various groups in an effort to determine what the Constitution meant to the founding generation of Americans. Exploring how early Americans shaped, responded to, and debated the document, this volume's 5 selections attempt to gauge the Constitution's ultimate success in forging a government based on the consent of the American people.

EDWARD COUNTRYMAN is University Distinguished Professor in the Clements Department of History at Southern Methodist University. He has also taught at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge; the University of Canterbury; and Yale University. He has published widely on the American Revolution, winning a Bancroft Prize for his book A People in Revolution (1981). Together with Evonne von Heussen-Countryman, he has also published Shane in the British Film Institute Film Classics series.