Why were Federalists at the 1787 Philadelphia convention--ostensibly called to revise the Articles of Confederation--so intent on scrapping the old system and drawing up a completely new frame of government?

In "Redeeming the Republic," Roger Brown focuses on state public-policy issues to show how recurrent outbreaks of popular resistance to tax crackdowns forced state governments to retreat from taxation, propelling elites into support for the constitutional revolution of 1787. The Constitution, Brown contends, resulted from upper-class dismay over the state governments' inability to tax effectively for state and federal purposes. The Framers concluded that, without a rebuilt, energized central government, the confederation would experience continued monetary and fiscal turmoil until republicanism itself became endangered.

A fresh and searching study of the hard questions that divided Americans in these critical years and still do today, "Redeeming the Republic" shows how local failures led to federalist resolve and ultimately to a totally new frame of central government.

The increasingly bitter partisan struggle over domestic and foreign policy, exacerbated by the effects of the war between Great Britain and France, grew into a corrosive mutual distrust. Federalists doubted that the government could withstand the strains being placed upon it, and Republicans suspected Federalists of conspiring to institute another form of government. Drawing on much new manuscript material, Professor Brown re-examines interpretations of the origins of the war that focus on sectional rivalries, the influence of "warhawk" congressmen, and the disruption of commerce. Analyzing the debate over the war question, he discusses the motives of the various individuals and groups, initial strategy and planning, and the role of the parties, the President, and Congress. He offers impressive new evidence that what spurred the Madison administration to declare war was the conviction that it must act decisively to halt the internal crumbling of confidence in the republican system, and to demonstrate to the nation and the world that the new republic would succeed.