The second episode of American History Too! focuses on the Constitution of the United States.  To help us understand the goings-on down

eighteenth century Philadelphia way, we bring aboard our very own American, and

revolutionary scholar, Jane Judge. 

During the podcast we examine why the US even needed a

constitution, and whether it was all an exercise in elites getting richer or

just a way of giving the British the intellectual middle-finger.  Malcolm also gets put on the spot regarding

his comments in the last podcast, Jane tells us that Charles Beard is not a man

to be listened to, and Mark argues that this is the first moment in American

History where the axiom of the ‘New World’ is justified.  What’s more, we investigate whether

Anti-Federalists were indeed ‘men of little faith’ and why Massachusetts was

the most high-maintenance of all the former colonies.  

Finally, we leap forward into the twenty-first century and discuss

the relevance of the second amendment (hello AK-47s) and the legacy of the

Founding Fathers in modern America.

All this and much more on this week’s American History Too!. 

Thanks to all of you who listened to the first podcast and we will be

back in two weeks with a discussion of ever-fascinating Andrew Jackson.

Cheers,

Mark & Malcolm

      Saul Cornell, ‘Aristocracy Assailed: The

Ideology of Backcountry Anti-Federalism’, Journal

of American History 76 (1990), pp.1148-1172

     Cecelia M. Kenyon, ‘Men of Little Faith: The

Anti-Federalists and the Nature of Representative Government’, William and Mary Quarterly, 12 (1955),

pp.3-42

   Lance Banning, ‘Republican Ideology and the

Triumph of the Constitution, 1789 to 1793’, William

and Mary Quarterly, 31 (1974), pp.167-188

      Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States

(New York: Macmillan, 1921 [c1913]) – for full text see http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433080136850;view=1up;seq=1

     Pauline Maier,

Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788, (New York:

Simon and Schuster, 2010)

     Pauline Maier, American scripture : making the Declaration of Independence (New

York:  Knopf, 1997)

      Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the people the rise of popular sovereignty in England and

America, (New York: Norton, 1988)