Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Broadwater
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Early Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Constitutional Thought

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, “Father of the Constitution,” were two of the most important Founders of the United States as well as the closest of political allies. Yet historians have often seen a tension between the idealistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the more pedestrian language of the Constitution. Moreover, to some, the adoption of the Constitution represented a repudiation of the democractic values of the Revolution. In this book, Jeff Broadwater explores the evolution of the constitutional thought of these two seminal American figures, from the beginning of the American Revolution through the adoption of the Bill of Rights. In explaining how the two political compatriots could have produced such seemingly dissimilar documents but then come to a common constitutional ground, Broadwater reveals how their collaboration ---and their disagreements---influenced the full range of constitutional questions during this early period of the American republic.

scholarly journals Race and Politics in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-179
Author(s):  
Howard A. Palley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Race And Politics ◽  
Inalienable Rights

Abstract The Declaration of Independence asserts that “All men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Nevertheless, the United States, at its foundation has been faced with the contradiction of initially supporting chattel slavery --- a form of slavery that treated black slaves from Africa purely as a commercial commodity. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom had some discomfort with slavery, were slaveholders who both utilized slaves as a commodity. Article 1 of our Constitution initially treated black slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning representation in order to increase Southern representation in Congress. So initially the Constitution’s commitment to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” did not include the enslaved black population. This essay contends that the residue of this initial dilemma still affects our politics --- in a significant manner.

Précis: The Rights Revolution in the Twentieth Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Tushnet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Warren Court ◽  
Inalienable Rights

The idea of rights has been central to U.S. political and constitutional discourse from the beginning. The Declaration of Independence appealed to “inalienable rights,” and the first amendments to the Constitution were universally described as a bill of rights. Yet, something distinctive appears to have happened to the idea of rights over the course of the twentieth century. By the end of the century, rights-claims were being asserted in locations, such as schools and prisons, where they had not been found at the century's beginning, and they were being asserted on behalf of claimants, such as fetuses and new arrivals to the United States, who were outside the domain of rights earlier. Even the content of rights-claims changed. Much of the Warren Court's work completed a constitutional agenda outlined, albeit unclearly, in the 1940s and early 1950s as part of the New Deal's constitutional vindication. The Warren Court added something new—an emphasis on personal autonomy—to the New Deal's concerns for fairness in the political process.

Mathematics and Our Founding Fathers

1976 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-307
Author(s):  
H. Howard Frisinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
George Washington ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Founding Fathers

On july 4, 1776, fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. This paper will discuss the contributions to mathematics or the interest in mathematics of four of these men. Two of these four, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, made significant contributions to the early development of mathematics in the United States. In addition to the mathematical contributions of Franklin and Jefferson, we shall briefly consider the mathematical interests of George Washington and John Adams.

Protestant Clergymen and American Destiny: I. Promise and Judgment, 1781–1800

1963 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-231
Author(s):  
James H. Smylie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
Democratic Revolution ◽  
The Common

Americans in “search” of the “goals,” “prospects,” and “purpose” of the United States share an interest in the latter part of the eighteenth century. This was the age of the democratic revolution in Western civilization which produced the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, those primary and permanent legacies paramount to our national existence. Although remote in time this period is the common experience of Americans because our lives are still regulated by the political instruments it produced.

Learning English in a Multidisciplinary Context

2019 ◽  
pp. 237-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Satellite Network ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Media Source ◽  
Learning English

John Adams is a biographical miniseries produced and broadcasted by the American satellite network HBO, which ran between March 16 and April 27, 2008. It illustrates the life of the United States' second president, John Adams, from 1770 to his death in 1826. Some of the key scenes deal with the Tea Party of Boston, the process of independence and the signing of the Declaration. This series is a major example of how to use a media source to get the student involved in the lesson while acquiring skills and knowledge belonging to different areas. The development of the American Revolution (for history and geography), the ideals of Liberalism (for philosophy), and the early pamphlets and the Declaration of Independence itself (for literature) are some examples of how the student can get acquainted with a multidisciplinary learning process. The experience has shown how this miniseries helps the student to learn English while watching it (with or without subtitles, regarding the subject's skills), and through several workshops afterwards.

America as History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Körner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines early Italian writings on the history of the American War of Independence, including Carlo Botta's History of the War of Independence of the United States of America (1809), Carlo Giuseppe Londonio's three-volume Storia delle colonie inglesi (1812–1813), and Giuseppe Compagnoni's twenty-nine-volume Storia dell'America (1829). The chapter compares the context in which these works were created to the changing responses they generated during the later course of the Risorgimento. It also draws on these writings to discuss historiography as political thought, arguing that most Italian historians writing about the American Revolution presented the United States as a political reality far removed from European experiences. Even 500 years after the American Declaration of Independence, Italian references to the United States did not necessarily mean an open endorsement of popular sovereignty.

Making History and Making the United States

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID THELEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The 1960S

In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson became the first American to put history to work to create a nation. He blazed a path that historians have been following ever since. Consider the difficulty Jefferson faced. Different events were happening in thirteen intensely local and isolated colonies among people with different traditions, languages, religions, and circumstances. Jefferson turned these scattered events into a national narrative. Behind these individual acts by agents of the British Crown aimed at different colonies was a single menace, Jefferson insisted, that should inspire these isolated individuals to discover and act upon what they shared as bearers of the traditional liberties of Englishmen. To introduce his stunning attempt to fit isolated events into a single narrative, Jefferson began by boldly declaring that it was “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds that have connected them with another.” The colonists, Jefferson proclaimed, were “one people.” Jefferson knew that the colonists were not “one people.” But in order to invent one nation, Jefferson had to invent one people, and in order to invent one people Jefferson had to invent one history that might unite that “one people.” It has been hard work ever since.From 1776 until sometime in the 1960s or 1970s, it was possible to believe – indeed, it was hard to question – that nations were, or even should be, the embodiment of people's destinies – that nations could express their identities, solve their problems, and be entrusted with their dreams and fates. The modern practice of history was born a couple of centuries ago to serve this process, to invent narratives and persuade peoples to interpret their personal experiences within national terms and narratives.

Founding Republics: The Near Failure of State Governments During the Critical Period (1776-1787)

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Bessette
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Hundredth Anniversary ◽  
The World ◽  
Actual Formation

Eleven years ago America celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the United States, an event that was announced to the world in the elegant phrases of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. This year we celebrated the bicentennial of the drafting of the Constitution, a task that engaged the considerable talents of a remarkable group of men who began three and one-half months of deliberation 200 years ago this week. Next year we will celebrate the anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution; the following year, the actual formation and beginning of the new government; and finally in 1991, the ratification of the Bill of Rights-the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

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