Carol Berkin, a prominent scholar of women's history, here provides a popular introduction to the framing of the United States Constitution. Her book features attention to the background of the Constitution, as well as its ratification and implementation, but her chief interest is in the Philadelphia Convention that drafted it. Apparently because she judged that those parts of the book were too short at 210 pages, she devotes 50 pages to sketches of the Philadelphia Convention's delegates and 36 pages to the Articles of Confederation and unamended Constitution.

This is the traditional story: the Articles of Confederation verged on collapse, the nationalists led by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton saw a better way, James Madison's Virginia Plan was the rough draft of the Constitution, he ultimately got more or less what he wanted, and 1789 was the fulfillment of the Revolution. I must take exception to it at almost every major point.

First, as George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, William Grayson, and other very prominent politicians noted at the time, the Articles of Confederation had not failed. Mason noted that the states' arrears to the Confederation amounted to more than the total gold and silver available in the United States, and thus couldn't be paid quickly; Dougherty proved in Collective Action Under the Articles of Confederation that, far from stingy, the state governments contributed more to the Confederation than any rational choice model would predict. In short, the states didn't give Congress as much money as Congress requested during the Revolution because there were British armies marching across, and more importantly camping out in, New Jersey, South Carolina, Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, etc. As Lee put it, there had been a ruinous war, so of course the United States had debt, but such an event was not going to recur; in time, the debt would be repaid, so there was no problem. Why win a war for local self-government, then surrender what had been won only four years later?

Berkin not only buys the Federalist movement's propaganda in regard to the Articles, but she obscures what the Federalists actually did in Philadelphia and the build-up to it. On page 125, she says that the Philadelphia Convention "had been called to restrain" the state governments, but, in fact, the Federalist leaders (Madison, Hamilton) had lied about their intentions in calling for a convention in summer 1787: they had told the state governments that the Philadelphia Convention would recommend amendments to the Articles of Confederation, not that it would work to create a new national government. For the effect this had on the ratification struggle, see chapter 3 of Virginia's American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840. This prevarication explains why Madison's Virginia delegation took the lead in imposing a rule of strict secrecy on the Philadelphia Convention's deliberations from the very beginning: they didn't want people back home to get wind of what was going on in Philadelphia.

Virginia's Governor Edmund Randolph stood up at the Convention's beginning and presented a Madisonian plan for a NATIONAL government with a NATIONAL executive, a NATIONAL legislative, and a NATIONAL judicial branch. Berkin's readers can be forgiven for not recognizing the significance of this terminology, as she calls the U.S. Constitution and the government under it "national" and "federal" interchangeably. Yet, at the time, proposing a "national" government was reason enough to ... well, to want to have the Convention meet in secret. It meant that final authority would be in the center, as under the British, not in the states, as since the Revolution.

More importantly, the major elements of the NATIONAL plan that Madison had led the Virginia delegation in drafting were all rejected by the Philadelphia Convention: no general legislative power was reposed in Congress, only enumerated legislative powers; no general jurisdiction was reposed in U.S. courts, only a few specific types of jurisdiction; no power to veto state laws was given to Congress; state legislatures were not stripped of their role in choosing congressmen; neither house of Congress would represent an American people, but each would represent the people of the states; the Federal Government wasn't given the power to use the military against the states; etc.

Madison, in a letter of October 24, 1787, desponded about the omission of the congressional veto, which he had raised repeatedly in Philadelphia. Yet, Berkin joins the run of the mill in offering the standard account. For an accurate view, see my The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Constitution (Politically Incorrect Guides).

Berkin's account of ratification could have been written by John Marshall. According to her, _The Federalist_ was the leading version of the Constitution presented by the proponents of ratification -- and never mind that the series wasn't completed until 10 states had already ratified and that, beyond some Virginians to whom Madison gave copies of the bound version of the first half of the series, all but scattered numbers of the series was virtually unknown outside New York; never mind that even in New York, it was the scheduling of the state's ratification convention (after 10 other states had already ratified), not Hamilton's nationalist arguments in the ratification convention, that brought Empire State ratification. For a collection of more influential and widely distributed Federalist essays, see Sheehan and McDowell's FRIENDS OF THE CONSTITUTION.

While Berkin's lack of expertise in this area accounts for her ready acceptance of some of the leading nationalist myths about the Constitution, some of her book's other shortcomings are less forgivable. One might say unforgivable. For example, she says that Article III of the Constitution creates "a system of inferior courts" (154), when in fact it only allows Congress to do so, and does not require that there ever be such courts. With that in mind, James Madison promised the Virginia Ratification Convention that the experiment would first be made of having a federal government without inferior courts. (Madison here and elsewhere did not feel bound by any imperative to be truthful.) She says that Article III established that "all trials except impeachments were to be jury trials" (154), which makes it hard to explain why there is a 7th Amendment. She says that Article IV establishes that "citizens in each state are entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in other states" (155), which is untrue. She says that under Article IV, a slave who escaped into another state would be "like a fugitive" (155), which is untrue. She says that "Article V establishes the procedure for amending the Constitution" (155), when in fact it establishes two procedures for doing so. She says that Article VI requires "state legislators" to support the Constitution, as if it didn't mention state "executive and judicial officers." Etc. In short, her account of the Constitution's contents is embarrassingly error-filled.

Other reviewers are correct in noting that the book is full of other editorial errors, as well.

The story Berkin wants to tell is an interesting story, but the lay reader should be steered away from this account. It is simply not accurate, in its small details or its main trajectory. Alas, it seems likely to have misled many people into believing the standard Hamilton-Marshall line about the Federal Constitution. Americans have been taught the myth that their Revolution was about creating a powerful imperial government, not the fact that it was about establishing a limited federal government among free, self-governing republics. This book is part of the problem.

Carol Berkin has produced for general readers and students in college surveys one of the finest and most respected piece of scholarship on this era of US History. The book is readable, it is sound in scholarship and provides a balance understanding of this most celebrated time and document in American History.

John A. Braithwaite

After reading "Counstitutional Journal", I found Carol Berkin's approach to be well-detailed in some respects, but lacking in (just a very few) others.

Sentences that were too wordy or that suffer from poor grammatical construction, such as the first sentence, last paragraph on page 154 (hardcover edition) throw the reader off the pace of the narrative.

I though the chapter on the delegates was well crafted, but in addition to the Constitution, it would have been a nice touch to include the Bill of Rights in the book as well. The Epilogue is a fitting summation to this book.

All in all, a good book, on an absorbing subject.

An engaging, enjoyable account of the workings of our "Founding Fathers" as they strive to write our Constitution. An interesting look at the personalities, compromises, maneuvering, and outcomes of this process. After reading this book, I know more about the Constitution and our government that I ever knew before. Any Social Studies teacher who misses this one is really missing out.

The most interesting parts of this book are the personal descriptions of the men who drafted the Constitution and the comments on the mood of the country at the time. The author makes an interesting observation: The American Revolution was not one revolution; rather, it was 13 revolutions, one for each of the colonies. However, post-1776 it became clear that a stronger form of Federal government was required. This book does a good job describing the varying opinions of state vs. federal responsibilities, as viewed by the founding fathers.

It's a relatively short book, though some of the descriptions drag a bit. And I would have liked to see a description of how the Bill of Rights came to be. Perhaps that was not part of the original Constitution, but it was added shortly thereafter and seems to be an integral part of this important document.