Description: The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution is a research tool of remarkable power. The volumes are encyclopedic, consisting of manuscript and printed documents compiled from hundreds of sources, thoroughly annotated and indexed. The Documentary History is an unrivalled reference work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the United States Constitution. This volume of Commentaries contains approximately 110 documents. Correspondence consists of forty-two letters, including thirty-three letters by Federalists, five by Antifederalists, and four by diplomats (two French, one Spanish, and one English). About forty-five individual, non-serialized newspaper items also are printed in this volume, including the dissent of three members of the Massachusetts Convention, a Federalist allegorical piece entitled New Breeches, Elbridge Gerry's response to the Maryland Landholder, and the amendments proposed in the Maryland Convention.
Review Quotes:
"The most important editorial project in the nation." (Leonard W. Levy, constitutional historian)
"Such documents give us a glimpse of America in 1787-88, of its people in their homes, taverns, and streets, their convictions, rituals, and customs. The DHRC captures that moment in all its complexity and powerfully demonstrates how the great documentary editions being published today can, by extending our command of the historical record, transform our knowledge and understanding of the past. It might well be, as the historian Leonard Levy once said, the most important documentary record being published today. Certainly it is the only one dedicated to uncovering the democratic component of the American founding. It is also a monumental scholarly achievement and a gift to all Americans, now and in the future, who want to know how our nation came into being." (Pauline Maier, historian and author of Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788)