Murphy, William P.

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Rossiter: 1787: The Grand Convention

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BOOK R EVIEWS1787: THE GRAND CONVENTION. By Clinton Rossiter. New York:The Macmillan Company, 1966. Pp. 443. $7.95.The Constitutional Convention of 1787 is, the author states,"the supreme event in the life of the American people .... It is inthe nature of a memorable event that it must be restudied and re-told by each generation .... ." And the convention of 1787 was, hestates, "an event about whose nature, meaning, origins, purposes,staging, techniques, cast of characters, and consequences men havebeen speculating in print ever since it was first recognized as history(as early, it would appear, as 1789), and about which they will con-tinue to speculate until the end of the Republic-and perhaps, ifHistory is still being written after that calamity, until the end ofrecorded time."'In the nineteenth century the adoption of the Constitution wasviewed as an act of divine providence which rescued the Americanpeople and their republican principles from the chaos and catas-trophe which ensued under the Articles of Confederation. TheFounders were seen as Olympian superstatesmen, motivated solelyby selfless idealism and undefiled patriotism. This was basically theinterpretation advanced by such eminent constitutional historiansas George Bancroft and George Tickner Curtis, whose works, Ihasten to add, are still highly valuable as rich storehouses of factualinformation. Perhaps the best-known and most widely read workof this early period was John Fiske's The Critical Period of Ameri-can History, 1783-1789 (1888).Early in this century Charles A. Beard published An EconomicInterpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913), prob-ably the single most influential book yet written on the Foundersand the adoption of the Constitution. Beard's thesis was that themovement for a new government and the drafting and ratificationof the Constitution were engineered by a small group of publicsecurities holders to protect their investments. The economic ap-proach quickly became the fashion and Beard's narrow thesis wasexpanded. Colonial society was interpreted as divided between an1 RossrTER, 1787: TRE GRAND CONVENTION 11, 13 (1966).aristocracy of wealth and power and lower classes composed of thepolitically and economically dispossessed. The American Revolu-tion was seen in a dual capacity-as a war for independence fromBritain and a simultaneous domestic revolt by the have-nots. TheArticles of Confederation and the new state constitutions fell intoplace as expressions of the internal democratic upheaval, which wasunwilling to replace one strong central government with anotherand instead sought refuge and protection in the smaller compassof sovereign states with strong legislatures and weak governors. Be-tween 1783 and 1787 the country moved ahead energetically in allareas. Under this interpretation, the Constitution was viewed asan instrument of reaction through which men of position and prop-erty sought to retain and perpetuate their political and economicdominance. Leading works supporting one or more of these inter-pretations are J. Franklin Jameson, The American Revolution Con-sidered as a Social Movement (1926); Merill Jensen, The Articlesof Confederation (1940) and The New Nation (1950); and ElishaP. Douglass, Rebels and Democrats (1955). Less scholarly criticsportrayed the Founders as conspirators and the Constitution as acoup d'dtat.Recent research and scholarship have challenged and under-mined the Beardian concept. Beard's book itself has been virtuallydemolished as historical scholarship by the devastating analysis ofRobert E. Brown in Charles Beard and the Constitution (1956) andthe painstaking research within Forrest McDonald's We the People(1958). Other works have re-examined colonial society, the Revolu-tion and the period which followed. Benjamin F. Wright's Con-sensus and Continuity, 1776-1787 (1958) is a good exposition of thepolitical and historical legitimacy of the Constitution. Two bril-liant articles-"The Founding Fathers: Young Men of the Revolu-tion ' 2 by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick and "The FoundingFathers: A Reform Caucus in Action"3 by John P. Roche-haverescued the framers from academic disrepute and refurbished theirreputations handsomely and realistically. An excellent summary ofthe result of the recent scholarship is Robert E. Brown's Reinter-pretation of the Formation of the American Constitution (1963).The revised perspective of the men and the event is reflected276 POL. ScI. Q. 181 (1961).'55 Am. POL. Sci. REV. 799 (1961).Vol. 1966: 1182] BOOK REVIEWS 1183DUKE LAW JOURNALin the book under review, which is the first major, full-length studyof the Constitutional Convention in almost twenty years. Earlierstudies-Max Farrand's The Framing of the Constitution (1913),Charles Warren's The Making of the Constitution (1928), and CarlVan Doren's The Great Rehearsal (1948) were and still are usefuland rewarding works. I believe, however, that Professor Rossiter'snew volume is the most readable, informative, and perceptive-inshort, the best-book on the Convention yet written.Professor Rossiter states his opinion of the economic school asfollows:Millions of words have been written, and at least a millionmore are even now laboring their way into print, about the eco-nomic, social, and political make-up of the two camps in thestruggle over ratification: the friends and the enemies of the Con-stitution in the conventions and among the people at large.Rather than add a superfluous ten or twenty thousand of my own,let me say simply that the evidence we now have leads most his-torians to conclude that no sharp economic or social line can bedrawn on a nationwide basis between these two camps, and thatit most certainly was not-neither in the subtle Beardian nor thevulgar Marxist sense-a contest between the haves and the have-nots of post-Revolutionary America.4In Rossiter's engaging narrative, the Founders are depicted asmen endowed with a happy combination of political idealism andpractical wisdom grounded solidly in experience, motivated by am-bition both for themselves and their country, and with a convictionthat both ambitions could best be realized under a considerablystronger national government. Desirous of preserving the best in-stitutions of their present, they were nonetheless willing to innovatefor the future. The result of their proposals, their debates, andtheir compromises was a document both conservative and progres-sive, creating ample strength at the center with latitude for moreif necessary, subordinating the states without relegating them toinsignificance-all in all, the best document possible which couldmove America forward and still be acceptable to the great mass ofthe people. One outstanding characteristic of the new charter wasthe amount of decision-making and interpretation left for futuregenerations to work out for themselves.The result is described by Rossiter as follows:'Rossr.R, op. cit. supra note 1, at 294-95.1184 [Vol. 1966: 1182Well and truly framed, the Constitution has also been ...well and imaginatively interpreted. It does more than live throughthe crises of the twentieth century as a venerated fossil; it thrivesupon them . . . as a self-renewing instrument of ordered liberty.And it thrives because . . . it is interpreted largely in the wayHamilton proposed and both Washington and Marshall agree itwould have to be interpreted if the Union were to endure andprosper: as the indulgent charter of a sovereign nation empoweredto defend itself vigorously against all foreign enemies and to cometo grips creatively with all domestic problems.5The book is traditional in organization-the situation which ex-isted in the 1780s, the available alternatives, biographical sketchesof the delegates, an analytical synopsis of the proceedings in theConvention and a summary of the ratification in the states. To allof these Rossiter brings an originality of perception and a freshnessof expression which bring the subject matter to absorbing life. Hisbiographical discussion of the various delegations is peerless; hissummary of the Convention's deliberations covers all the essentialswithout bogging down in parliamentary detail; but his treatmentof the ratification process I thought could have been a bit moreexpansive.Three "bonus" assets are worthy of special mention. One is asummary statement of the key ideas in the consensus of politicaland constitutional thought which prevailed in 1787. This is a dis-tillation taken from the author's earlier work, The Seedtime of theRepublic (1953). Another welcome feature is the concluding chap-ter on the last years of the framers, which summarizes their careersafter 1787. Finally, I would mention the excellent and convenient-ly arranged bibliography. Although Rossiter modestly refers to itas "select," it may be safely said that few, if any, really significantworks have been omitted.Having spent considerable time plowing the period of our na-tional origins, I must confess that I never come away without asense of amazement and awe that, in such a brief period and in sucha small area, there should have been produced so many men ofexceptional political ability as existed in the America of the lastquarter of the eighteenth century. No other period in our historyhas even approximated it. A great many of the leaders of the daywere delegates to the Grand Convention, the most notable absencesOId. at 333.Vol. 1966: 1182] .BOOK REVIEWS 1185DUKE LAW JOURNALbeing Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The talent of the timeis dramatically illustrated by Rossiter's exercise in composing a dif-ferent list of delegates who might have comprised the Convention.It is only slightly less illustrious than the actual assembly. If theConvention was not, as Jefferson called it, "an assembly of demi-gods," it was by any relevant standard a remarkable group, thelike of which we certainly could not muster today. The 1780swere, to use Edmund S. Morgan's perceptive phrase, "the briefperiod when America's intellectual leaders were her political lead-ers."It is disheartening, for me at least, to compare the period of ournational origins with the America of today. In his summary of thepolitical consensus of that day, Rossiter states:Finally, it takes more than a perfect plan of government topreserve that state of ordered liberty which is the mark of thegood society. Something else is needed, some quality of mind andheart diffused among the people to strengthen the urge to peace-ful obedience and among their governors to keep them fromsliding into corruption. In a republic that 'something else' is,quite simply, public and private morality. Free government restsat bottom on the moral basis of decent, brave, honest, liberty-loving, industrious, patriotic men. Such men are the raw ma-terials of free government, and there must be enough of them inevery society to overcome the obstinate forces of dishonor, un-reason, sloth and cruelty.6At the beginning of the Republic, America had the "somethingelse." Can the same be said for today?WILLIAM P. MURPHY*THE PRESS IN THE JURY Box. By Howard Felsher and MichaelRosen. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Pp. 239. $4.95.The coverage of criminal trials by mass news media is a subjectwhich continues to capture attention and yet persistently defies illu-minating analysis. It is also the subject of a recent book by HowardFelsher and Michael Rosen.1 The authors, as the title indicates,have put the press in the jury box and found it "Guilty." Guilty6 Id. at 63.*Professor of Law, University of Missouri. B.A. 1941, Southwestern University;LL.B. 1948, University of Virginia; J.S.D. 1960, Yale University.1 FELSHER & ROSEN, THE PRESS IN THE JURY Box (1966).1186 [Vol. 1966:1182

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Rossiter: 1787: The Grand Convention

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