The Bill of Rights The fight to secure America's liberties

Carol Berkin

Book - 2015

Describes how the Bill of Rights came into existence, detailing how the Founders argued over the contents of the document, reflecting an ideological divide between the power of the federal versus state governments that still exists to this day.

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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Simon & Schuster 2015.
©2015
Language
English
Main Author
Carol Berkin (author)
Edition
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition
Physical Description
259 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781476743790
9781476743806
Contents unavailable.
Review by Choice Review

Historian Berkin (Baruch College, CUNY) offers a concise rendering of the crafting of the Bill of Rights, particularly the instrumental role played by Virginia's James Madison. George Mason urged addition of a bill of rights, but Madison largely shaped many of the actual amendments. Berkin relates how the 54 delegates in Philadelphia's Independence Hall subscribed to the rule of law, separation of powers, and a republic based on the consent of the governed. During the ratification fight, Federalists and anti-Federalists clashed ideologically and philosophically regarding the American Revolution's meaning. The promise to add a bill of rights allowed for narrow ratification. The first Congress under the new national document, to Madison's surprise, proved reluctant to devise such constitutional protections. Painstakingly, Madison battled to win support for the promised amendments, which hearkened to imperial abuses, religious differences, and a felt need to provide protections against potential government abuses. In December 1791, the requisite 11th state ratified the Bill of Rights, although Georgia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts failed to do so for almost another 150 years. What never ended was the ideological clash between state and federal authority. A good primer for general libraries. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Robert C. Cottrell, California State University, Chico

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Berkin (Wondrous Beauty), a professor of history at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, provides a narrative history of two critical constitutional moments in American history: the introduction and adoption by the first federal Congress of the Bill of Rights and the Bill's rapid ratification by the states. She tells the story briskly, working from comprehensive sources, and she omits nothing of importance. The problem is that Berkin leaves it at that, assuming that a story reveals its significance simply by being told. Readers won't gather from her account that there are any concerns or controversies over decisions made in that initial Congress-principally by James Madison, then leader of the House of Representatives, but also by his colleagues. Did those men err in some of their choices? Americans have endlessly debated parts of the Bill, especially the Second Amendment of late, while venerating others, such as the First; Berkin briefly alludes to such matters but makes no connection between them and the Bill's framers. This is narrative, celebratory history at its purest. What it lacks is a point of view in addition to the story. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

The Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia in 1787 was supposed to propose reforms to the Articles of Confederation. Instead attendees wrote an entirely new document. Berkin (history, Baruch Coll.; A Brilliant Solution) tells the story of the Bill of Rights in the Convention, the ratification in the states, and in the First Congress. Those who opposed the ratification of the Constitution cited the lack of a bill of rights to limit the powers of the proposed federal government. James Madison, a key figure in the Convention, opposed such an addition. But Madison agreed to support one in order to appease the opponents of the Constitution. Madison, elected to the First Congress in order to manage the amendment process, was key to the drafting and adoption of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Berkin is a talented writer, and her story moves swiftly. The book also includes a biographical section profiling all those involved. VERDICT A scholarly and readable book that is excellent for history buffs. [See Prepub Alert, 11/17/14.]-Michael O. Eshleman, -Bloomington, IN © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Though we often take the Bill of Rights for granted, it took a monumental fight to get it approved. Berkin (History/Baruch Coll.; Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, 2014, etc.) deftly examines its passage.Of the states that initially ratified the Constitution, many included amendments and cries for a second Constitutional Convention. Replacing the restrictive Articles of Confederation, the Constitution addressed the continuing postwar economic depression and attempted to improve the cooperation of the 13 states. Many states, which had their own currencies and import duties, viewed the power to tax and regulate commerce as tyranny. To those, the checks and balances in the Constitution were not enough to preserve the states' liberties, and the question of states rights vs. federalism was threatening to dissolve the union. As the new Congress met in New York in 1789, James Madison set about presenting a distillation of the hundreds of amendments requested by the ratifying states. It was a way to secure the loyalty of citizens who had fought for representation on a local level but were still wary of central government. Madison feared not an oppressive government but rather abusive practices of social majorities against minorities. He felt that the Bill of Rights was merely a "parchment barrier," but he hoped it had the potential to become a standard of behavior. Even though passage was assured in the Federalist-dominated Congress, the author ably shows how difficult and obstructionist the House debate became as nerves frayed in the summer heat. With constant demands for a new Convention, Madison feared for the Constitution and knew that this Bill of Rights would distract attempts at rewriting it. A highly readable American history lesson that provides a deeper understanding of the Bill of Rights, the fears that generated it and the miracle of the amendments. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The Bill of Rights Prologue For the majority of modern Americans, the Bill of Rights stands as the most important element of the Constitution, the touchstone, as James Madison hoped it would become, of our shared unalienable rights and liberties. Along with the Declaration of Independence, these first ten amendments--with their guarantees of freedom of speech, religion, and the press, and the right to assemble; their promise of a speedy trial by jury; their protection against double jeopardy and unreasonable search and seizure; and their recognition of the right to bear arms--announce to the world our national values and ideals. They have served as the standards by which we measure our individual actions and the actions of our government toward its own citizens. Yet hallowed by time as the Declaration and the Bill of Rights have become, it is crucial to place these two documents in their historical context and examine the immediate circumstances that generated them. The men who created the Declaration did so to justify a revolution, and the men who passed the Bill of Rights acted to secure the loyalty of citizens wary of their new federal government. The men who debated, revised, and campaigned for and against the first ten amendments were eighteenth-century Americans. Their world is not ours. The memories they carried were of imperial abuses, the painful renunciation of their English identities, and a long and exhausting war for independence. The excitement they felt and the fears that haunted them were the result of a rare opportunity to create a new nation and to establish it as a republic. If they knew they were making history, they did not know what that history would be. The men who produced the Bill of Rights were neither demigods nor visionaries. They were mere mortals, some brilliant, some quite ordinary, most of them wealthier and better educated than their neighbors. Almost all of them were veteran politicians, and though most of the issues they grappled with will seem foreign to us today, the tempo and tone of their politics will be familiar. In their wrangling and debating, in their manipulation of procedure to expedite their agenda or derail that of their opponents, in the flare-ups of ego and the indulgence of idiosyncracy, and in the combustible mixture of self-interest, ideals, and principles that propelled them, these men resemble political leaders of every era. But in their burden of serving in a government without precedents and with uncertain legitimacy, in their pressing anxiety that this government might fail, and in their knowledge that America was dwarfed by the great imperial powers across the Atlantic, they are uniquely men of the late eighteenth century. In 1789, when James Madison proposed the Bill of Rights, the young nation faced a great ideological divide with regard to a question that is being revived today: should broad power and authority reside in the federal government, as the Federalists wished, or should it reside in the state governments, where the Antifederalists insisted it could best protect the people's liberties? In these early years of the new nation, this ideological struggle was raw and fraught with immediacy, for the Constitution that empowered the national government was new and lacked the traditions that over time lend legitimacy and elicit loyalty. The political decisions the men of this early era made forestalled but did not dissolve the tension between localism and nationalism that was endemic to the federal system they created. That tension would reemerge in the nineteenth century when challenges to federal law and policy led to the Civil War. Even in our lifetime, this issue of where ultimate power should reside remains a Gordian knot. This confrontation between states' rights and national authority started with the fierce debates over ratification of the Constitution, and it continued in the First Federal Congress, in the state legislatures, and in the press as Washington's first administration began. We can appreciate the Bill of Rights only in the context of this struggle. These amendments, conceived by James Madison, one of the most astute Federalists of his day, were intended to weaken, if not crush, the continuing opposition to the new federal government he had been so instrumental in creating. By assuring citizens that the new government would honor and protect their liberties, he hoped to achieve two interlocking goals. The first was to ease the fear of tyranny harbored by many within the general populace and thus separate the Antifederalist followers from their leaders. The second was to preempt the Antifederalists' plans to pass amendments that would severely restrict the powers of the new government. Madison's Bill of Rights was thus more a political strategy than a statement of America's most cherished values. Yet Madison was keenly aware of its potential to set a high standard for the relationship between citizens and the men who governed them. Even more important to Madison, this explicit guarantee of rights and liberties could play a critical role in protecting minority groups from abuse by the majority. The addition of these amendments was thus a patriotic as well as a political measure, for it was designed to strengthen republican values and to ensure that the American government would honor the people's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was the genius of James Madison that he could unite practical considerations and noble aspirations, and join the ideological with the ideal. All of the rights Madison wished to protect had their roots in the founding generation's colonial and revolutionary past. They speak to imperial abuses and to hallowed Anglo-American traditions that do not resonate today. Yet the generations that followed added their understandings of these rights just as today we add our own. In this way, the amendments once dismissed as only a "parchment barrier" remains our collective heritage and we remain its guardian for future generations. Excerpted from The Bill of Rights: The Fight to Secure America's Liberties by Carol Berkin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.