Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution
Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution Woody
Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's
origins by telling the history of the average Americans who
challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the
revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The framers
who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse
America's post-Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They
believed too many middling Americans exercised too much influence
over state and national policies. That the framers were only
partially successful in curtailing citizen rights is due to the
reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans. If not to
protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people, what
motivated the framers? In "Unruly Americans and the Origins of
the Constitution," Holton provides the startling discovery
that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to
make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to
that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately
away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the
Constitution, Holton captures how the same class of Americans that
produced Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in
damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now
revere.
