The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History

by Michael Kammen (editor)

The complete story of the American Constitution, told in the words of those who created it.
 
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Michael Kammen has gathered together the fundamental documents needed to understand the genesis and evolution of the United States Constitution—from the exploratory notions concerning the nature of constitutions in 1776, the Articles of Confederation in 1777, and various constitutional plans proposed at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, to the advocacy position of “Publius” in the 21 most important  Federalist  papers and contrasting views offered by leading Anti-Federalist dissenters.
 
Kammen also includes private correspondence that passed between prominent founders during the crucial years 1787 to 1789 (58 revealing letters), along with the Judiciary Act of 1789 and the Bill of Rights, which completed the basic structure of government and provided essential security for its citizens.
 
Taken together, these are the great state papers that illuminate America’s brilliant and unique contribution to the history of political thought and democratic values.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Law

407 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Michael Gedaliah Kammen was a professor of American cultural history at Cornell University. He won the Pulitzer Prize (History, 1973) for his book, People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization.

Reviews

[Gopal Sadagopal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. The thoughts and writings of Madison, Hamilton etc awe so deep and their vision is so far into the future.
Also surprised at the style of writing - very long multi-concept sentences that address the pros and cons of their thoughts in the same sentence quite often making the sentence run the length of a whole paragraph even though the general public was not as well read and yet yearned to hear the thoughts of their leaders whose papers were generally published in newspapers that were consumed by the masses in an era where that was the primary medium of communication of ideas besides local stump speakers who focussed and expanded on one or two salient points they found favorable to their preferred side of the issue.

[Bernard English · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a mountain of brochures and newspaper articles debating the merits of the Constitution. This collection being under 400 pages only includes mostly the writings of the founding fathers and well-known anti-federalists. Vote counting is nothing new, Madison and Jefferson even used numerical codes to transmit sensitive information to each other by mail. The Notes on Further Reading guides readers who would like to know more about the influence of state constitutions on the Federal Constitution. I wish Kammen had devoted one chapter to this theme, though he does make a few scattered remarks about state constitutions.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

read for american revolution class

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of documents and essays from our founding fathers.

[Leif Kurth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History is one of the better books detailing how our Constitution came to be. The correspondence between the main players in the arena, as well as the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers provides context that is hard to replicate in more current analysis of the topic. For students of Constitutional Law and those studying American History, Kammen's work is a must read.