The Original Compromise: What the Constitution's Framers were Really Thinking

What were the Founding Fathers really thinking when they gathered in the Pennsylvania State House to draft the United States Constitution? When answering this question, most have relied on The Federalist Papers, which was first published in book form after the close of the Convention, in 1788. To this day, the book's status is sacrosanct for most Americans. Yet as David Brian Robertson shows, the Papers represented one side of the debate and does not fully capture the political sensibilities that produced the U.S. Constitution. Robertson, drawing from the full range of contemporary sources and not just the Papers, provides a truly authoritative account of the founders' collective political reasoning during the Convention. Organized thematically, each chapter covers a crucial Constitutional issue: the respective roles of the executive, the judiciary, and the legislature; the balance between the federal government and the states; slavery; and war and peace. In virtually every instance, the process was decidedly political, fractious, and piecemeal. As much as they wanted to design the government that would best serve their people, the Founders struggled to balance their broad ideals with self-interested policies and procedures. Robertson's boldly revisionist account of the political horse-trading that dominated the Convention not only greatly enriches our understanding of the nation's founding; it also elucidates why the government they created has proven so difficult to use.

Table of Contents:
Principal Speakers at the Convention Abbreviations 1. Introduction Part 1: The Illness and the Cure 2. The Setting 3. The Remedy 4. Controlling Republican Politics: The Main Challenge 5. Broad Nationalism: The Politics of Virginia's Plan 6. Narrow Nationalism: The Virginia Plan's Opponents Part 2: The Politics of Building Government Institutions 7. Selecting U.S. Representatives 8. Selecting U.S. Senators 9. Congressional Independence 10. Selecting the President 11. Presidential Independence and Isolation 12. The Courts and a Bill of Rights Part 3: The Politics of Government Power 13. Federalism 14. Slavery 15. Economic Authority 16. National Security and Foreign Policy Authority 17. The End Game 18. Conclusion: A Republic If You Can Keep It Appendix 1: Chronological Sequence of Constitutional Convention Decisions Appendix 2: The United States Constitution and accompanying documents from the Constitutional Convention

About the Author :
David Brian Robertson is Curator's Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of The Constitution and America's Destiny and Federalism and the Making of America.

Review :
"The Original Compromise combines profound scholarship with remarkably accessible writing to make more clear than ever before just how and why the Constitution emerged in the form that it did. Robertson is attentive to the framers' ideas and their intertwined interests, and he traces persuasively the initiatives, negotiations, and compromises that led to their imperfect but enduring achievement." --Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania "By systematically considering the political process that produced the Constitution, this immensely useful and beautifully realized study reveals the many compromises that made the government of the United States possible. So doing, it deepens understanding of key themes in American political development, and thoughtfully explains why ambiguities about constitutional meaning continue to animate contemporary disputes." --Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University "The Philadelphia Convention may have been 'an assembly of demigods,' as Thomas Jefferson later suggested. But the Constitution was still written one word at a time. By letting the delegates speak for themselves, Robertson shows us that genius works in pieces, that creation is a stormy voyage of discovery, and that human frailty is a necessary virtue." --Richard F. Bensel, Professor of Government, Cornell University "...Robertson draws chiefly from the records of the convention debates to portray the reasoning of the delegates and the progression of agreements and compromises... Recommended." --CHOICE