The "Critical Period" of American history-the years between the end
of the American Revolution in 1783 and the ratification of the U.S.
Constitution in 1789-was either the best of times or the worst of
times. While some historians have celebrated the achievement of the
Constitutional Convention, which, according to them, saved the
Revolution, others have bemoaned that the Constitution's framers
destroyed the liberating tendencies of the Revolution, betrayed
debtors, made a bargain with slavery, and handed the country over
to the wealthy.This era-what John Fiske introduced in 1880 as
America's "Critical Period"-has rarely been separated from the U.S.
Constitution and is therefore long overdue for a reevaluation on
its own terms. How did the pre-Constitution, postindependence
United States work? What were the possibilities, the tremendous
opportunities for "future welfare or misery for mankind," in
Fiske's words, that were up for grabs in those years? The scholars
in this volume pursue these questions in earnest, highlighting how
the pivotal decade of the 1780s was critical or not, and for whom,
in the newly independent United States. As the United States is
experiencing another, ongoing crisis of governance, reexamining the
various ways in which elites and common Americans alike imagined
and constructed their new nation offers fresh insights into
matters-from national identity and the place of slavery in a
republic, to international commerce, to the very meaning of
democracy-whose legacies reverberated through the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries and into the present day. Contributors: Kevin
Butterfield, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George
Washington at Mount Vernon * Hannah Farber, Columbia University *
Johann N. Neem, Western Washington University * Dael A. Norwood,
University of Delaware * Susan Gaunt Stearns, University of
Mississippi * Nicholas P. Wood, Spring Hill College.
General
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