'Leonard and Cornell have distilled and advanced understandings of what the framers intended for the US Constitution to do, and how federalists and Democratic-Republicans respectively interpreted it, even as these parties sometimes changed positions in the process. The authors also highlight how Democratic-Republicans triumphed while continuing to share some of the elitist assumptions of the original framers, and how rising democratic sentiment undermined these assumptions and thus altered constitutional understanding … This is a particularly appropriate book for history and constitutional law classes on antebellum America. Summing Up: Recommended.' J. R. Vile, Choice
Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. The new constitution; 2. The federalist constitution and the limits of constitutional dissent; 3. The democracy vs the law: the role of the federal judiciary, 1789–1815; 4. The paradoxes of Jeffersonian constitutionalism; 5. The white democracy; 6. The Marshall Court, the Indian nations, and the democratic ascendancy; Conclusion: the constitutional triumph and failure of the democratic party; Bibliographical essay; Index.