The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates

This book, edited by Professor Ralph Ketcham, is designed to be a companion to the Mentor edition of The Federalist Papers. He writes, “For anyone interested in political thought in action, the United States during the 1770s and 1780s is perhaps the most exiting period in the country’s history. The discussion of political ideas that accompanied the American Revolution was seminal to the effort in 1787-1788 to draft and ratify a new constitution for the United States. … The eleven years between the Stamp Act Crisis (1765) and the Declaration of Independence (1776) were years of vigorous, creative political thinking which produced hundreds of pamphlets, newspaper articles, and other writings on questions of representative government and confederation.” [p. 1] “Between 1776 and 1787,” he tells us, “Americans undertook to create a new republic. They had to articulate and establish, perhaps beginning with revised understandings of human nature itself, basic…