Events surrounding the writing and ratification of the first constitution are recounted and interpreted.

This is the first volume of an ambitious project which, when completed, will offer to the historian of early America the first readily accessible account of the nation's first elections. Volume I documents the first federal elections in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. This book also covers the Constitution, the Confederation Congress, and federal elections, as well as the Confederation Congress and the First Federal Election Ordinance of September 13th, 1788.
Included in the three-volume set are hundreds of documents which together illuminate the critical...

"This wonderfully rich volume challenges those who claim that political history is arid, narrow, or worse, irrelevant to our own concerns. Jensen's study explores popular political mobilization on the eve of American independence. It reconstructs the complex decisions that slowly, often painfully transformed a colonial rebellion into a genuine revolution. Jensen's well-paced narrative never loses sight of the ordinary men and women who confronted the most powerful empire in the world." --T.H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History, Northwestern University

"This wonderfully rich volume challenges those who claim that political history is arid, narrow, or worse, irrelevant to our own concerns. Jensen's study explores popular political mobilization on the eve of American independence. It reconstructs the complex decisions that slowly, often painfully transformed a colonial rebellion into a genuine revolution. Jensen's well-paced narrative never loses sight of the ordinary men and women who confronted the most powerful empire in the world." --T.H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History, Northwestern University