The Ordeal of the Constitution

by Robert Allen Rutland

Book Overview

The years 1787 and 1788 saw a struggle between two groups- the federalists and the Antifederalists. Here, in rich details are the events that influenced and ultimately ratified the constitution, whose... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0930350502
• ISBN13: 9780930350505
• Release Date: December 1983
• Publisher: Northeastern University Press
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A fair overview of the anti-federalist perspective

History is written by the winners, the truism goes, and so it was with the Constitution. The Federalist Papers are much easier to find than the collected Anti-Federalist Papers, etc. One cannot argue that this is because the Anti-Federalists were some fringe, as it were: the Federalists had Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, but the Anti-Federalists had Patrick Henry, George Clinton, and Melancton Smith and/or Richard Henry Lee (there is some debate as to which of the latter wrote as "The Federal Farmer"). Rutland covers the ratification effort from the anti-Federalist perspective, and shows how they were out-organized and outmaneuvered at nearly every turn by the Federalists. Rutland isn't as skilled a writer as Isaacson, McCullough, or Gordon Wood, or I'd have given it five stars. It repaid my time, and exposed me to views and information that aren't as easy to come by as the "conventional" view.