For a quarter of a century between 1763 and 1788, Americans intensely debated the nature of government and the need to protect individual liberties. The debate climaxed in the arguments over the ratification of the Constitution. Through a selection of essential documents from 1787 and 1788, this new edition gives readers the flavor and immediacy of the great debate in all its fire, brilliance, and political intensity. Organized by topic, this is a convenient reference and teaching tool. This updated edition contains an entirely new section on the debate over class structure, property rights, and the economy under the proposed Constitution an ideal introduction to a debate meaningful today."

For a quarter of a century between 1763 and 1788, Americans intensely debated the nature of government and the need to protect individual liberties. The debate climaxed in the arguments over the ratification of the Constitution. Through a selection of essential documents from 1787 and 1788, this new edition gives readers the flavor and immediacy of the great debate in all its fire, brilliance, and political intensity. Organized by topic, this is a convenient reference and teaching tool. This updated edition contains an entirely new section on the debate over class structure, property rights, and the economy under the proposed Constitution-an ideal introduction to a debate meaningful today.

Originally published in German in 1988, the late Jurgen Heideking's exhaustive study of the debates over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution compares the methods used to call state ratifying conventions and explores everything that made up the ratification debate, from town meetings and festive culture to private correspondence and print media. In Heideking's view, the construction of a new political process was an unintended but key result of ratification debates over the federal Constitution. Heideking's work anticipated diverse strands of subsequent scholarship; this translation can claim to provide not only an invaluable account of the ratification debates but also a master narrative for integrating future studies.