"obama on the couch" is the name of the book. booktv cover dr. frank in a long form of that at politics and prose. you can watch that that booktv.org. >> and now i'm booktv, pauline maier was the recipient of the 2011 paolucci/bagehot book award. during the award ceremony, professor mayer spoke about her book, "ratification," for about an hour. >> good afternoon. my name is mark kimmitt and the chief academic officer and it's my privilege to introduce our speaker and the recipient of the 2011 paolucci/bagehot book award, professor pauline maier. professor maier is a professor of american history at mit where she has taught for more than 30 years. she received her ph.d from harvard university in 1968, and it's also taught at the

university of massachusetts and the university of wisconsin. in addition to being a greatly acclaimed scholar, she is also a devoted teacher of generation of undergraduates, regularly offering a survey course in american history. her books have focused on the power of ideas and the shaping of early america. they've also recovered the human complexity of a founding experience bring important nuance to conventional understandings. in her first book, "from resistance to revolution," colonial radicals and development of american opposition to britain in 1972, she sought to identify the causes of the transformation of generalized discontents into revolutionary commitment in the years leading up to the war or independence. in the old revolutionaries, political lies in the age of samuel adams in 1880 she surveyed several the men in the revolutionary generation, the

generation of 1776, and distinguished their concerns and their faith from a later generation which shaped the constitution and the new american republic. the generation of 1787. in the american scripture, the making of the equation of independence in 1997 bush examined the drafting and editing of the declaration and the document transformation during the early 19th century revolutionary manifesto into a statement of principles. that book also examined some 90 state and local declarations of independence written between april and july 1776 that had been generally forgotten, but she argued often make a better case for independence than did jefferson's declaration it's a. "american scripture" was on the new york times book review choice list for the best books of the year, and was a finalist for the national book critics circle award. in 1998 she resides in my tea's

killing award given to a distinguished scholar in the university for an achievement. today we honor professor maier for turn 10, the people debate the constitution, 1787-1788 which is nearly a decade in the making. hard as it may be to believe, this is the first full-length narrative treatment of the ratification process across all the states ever written. and if you think about it, that has been an especially stunning omission in our historic of the. for the writing of the constitution, i'm sorry, for the writing of a constitution by a small group of gifted statesman, is not as novel and undertaken as we often think. the polish parliament wrote one in 1505, for example, which lasted nearly 300 years. what is novel and, indeed, extraordinary is that such a document is subject to

democratic consent on a continent wide scale. the so-called miracle at philadelphia is less miraculous than america that ensued across the several states in that year. what is more, because it is the ratifying and not the writing which made a constitution the law of the land, in a certain sense it is far more important to understand what the ratifiers thought they were consenting to than what the drafters were intending in their writing. that crucial decision is almost universally overlooked by those seeking to discern the constitution's original intent. thanks to professor maier's work we are now in a much better position to understand our constitution, and so to understand ourselves. "ratification" is a tour de force bringing vividly to life in numerous personalities otherwise lost to history. it casts new light on the oldest of american devised, the dispute between federalist and anti-federalist. the book is how ring and it is a

beautiful work of prose. already it has received numerous awards, and tonight we will honor the 2011 paolucci/bagehot book award. ladies and gentlemen, pauline maier. [applause] >> thank you for that lovely introduction, which actually will lead very beautifully and do exactly what i hope to talk about when i intend to talk about tonight. but let me first say how delighted and honored i am to be here tonight, and to be the recipient of this distinguished award. although i think i have written books on some significance in my field over a career which is getting to be, what do we say, long in tooth? i have never won any book awards until the publication of "ratification" so i feel immensely gratified, and to

receive a prize for a book that concerns liberty is especially moving. what could be more important? and, of course, hearing about the early recipients of this nation understand this is not a prize in american history. it is in a much larger sphere. and i will say that the one criticism i have received of this book from a professor at yale law school is that i underestimate the significance of the ratification debates when i said that they were the most important debate or one of the most important debates in american history. he said it was a landmark world history. you did it an injustice, and i will no longer do that. in any case, thank you very much. i am grateful for all the members of the committee who gave me this great honor, who had a role. this is a great honor.

well, i thought what i would talk about is what mark henry said. how bizarre is it that this is the first book that gives a full narrative of the ratification could, the constitution. and for those of you who are little, you know, shall we say remote in your memory of american history, let me say precisely what this was. it is the event that began when the federal convention adjourned on september 1787, and concluded roughly a year later, september 13, 1788 when the confederation congress declared the constitution officially ratified. in that period essentially the constitution's fate was decided by specially elected democratically elected ratifying conventions in each of the states. and that is what -- this is the

first time in world history that such an important decision which was, in fact, dedicated to the people. and, of course, our whole future rested on it. the first history of this, the first full narrative history. compare it to -- we have shelves of for quite actual books that tell the story of the center convention. some of them and with a chapter or an appendix that takes off what happened in ratification. you know, delaware first then pennsylvania. tying up loose strings is basically what this is doing. but to put this briefly at the end of the book on the convention suggested that the real story is the writing of the constitution. that the ratification was basically a no-brainer, if you will, and, therefore, a nonstory. when i start reflect why anyone could have thought that, it

strikes me that it clearly comes out of that profound reverence for the constitution, what set in very rapid after was ratified. already in january 1778, langston smith, one of the important critics of the constitution in new york said to his are found amazement that people were speaking of the constitution as if it were written by god. how could this have happened? because it was so at odds with his experience and that of other americans in 1787 and 1788, in that period the constitution was attacked regularly. it was under fire. let me give you a couple extreme examples to make my point. there was a newspaper writer who signed set know who in october 1787 said the constitution was the work of wealthy and ambitious spirits,

conspirators. and nothing less than, and i quote, ladies and gentlemen, the most daring attempt to establish a despotic aristocracy among free men that the world ever witnessed. and then on july 4, 1788, a group of anti-federalists did what i supposed to us unthinkable, they celebrated the fourth of july by ceremonially burning a copy of the constitution, along with the news of virginia's ratification. not as william lloyd garrison would later do because it was, packed with flavor and a from the continuation of slavery, but because these men, it undermined everything for which they had thought in the american revolution. it was a very appropriate thing to do on the fourth of july, burned that which threatened the country's achievement at that

time. in fact of course this year was one of profound controversy. i mean, these are only modest examples of it. and intense excitement. the debate over the constitution was the event of the year. the newspapers were full of articles about the constitution. one observer in new england said that the people there were reading the newspapers and all of this literature on the constitution more than they read the bible. and that was saying something in the land of puritans. when the conventions met in state after state they often stated precisely the same problem, where would they find a hole big enough to contain, not only for delegates, but the throngs of people who wanted to hear the debates. this was the event of the year. why all this interest? because people did not know if

the constitution would be the country's salvation or its ruin. wasn't going to support the rights of the people or would it destroy them? and so as long as those issues were unsettled, of course this was not a no-brainer. moreover, i would argue this was an era, i suppose i am backing up on my promise to appeal that i would never underestimate the importance of the ratification in world history again, but i will say i think it was a peculiarly critical, probably the most critical error in american history. because it bridges our feeble national origins in the 1780s and strengthen international respectability that we subsequently achieved in which i think maybe this struggle to maintain the modern world. okay, if it was so important, so exciting, why did nobody write this book a long time ago?

there are a couple of obvious answers. one is that the documentary basis huge and it's widely scattered. it's not just in time to archive and the original 13 states, but it's in small local libraries. i think it would probably take more than a single professional life to master all of these documentary record, and then to write a book. and as i like to say, i am unaware that god is accepting applications for historians for second lives because they're unable to to finish their book. historians have been aware of that so they've done what we are trained to do with subjects which seem to be supersized. that is, they have written on parts of the story. they have written on ratification in a single state, or on some part of the literature or on a single group of contenders. or they have written on the

whole of the story -- [inaudible] and with regard to the state conventions which have been really nice if i come is a very rare historian who has been ready to head into that direction, i think there's a whole nother reason, and that is the records there are peculiarly flawed. in 1986, this is really an important year. that's over 25 years ago, if my mathematics are right. thank you very much, mark. james fox 10 who was the curator of many scripts of the labor of congress published an article in the texas law review. he was contending with -- the american legal community. but what he said was that he pointed out that many states had no records of the debates in the ratifying convention. this is true.

and makes it very difficult to talk about what was said it was recorded. the states that did have their debates recorded and published are open to tremendous suspicion. the published debates have several flaws he said. first of all, this is really the beginning of period were debates and legislatures and other similar bodies were recorded. stenography was a young craft and hudson claimed it took five years to master it. and few of the shorthand meant as difficult in the mid-18th century put in five years. so we were pray to their skills. they could not have taken down for failing account of these debates, and he didn't even try pick of course nor did james madison and the federal convention. thank god. coming, we can read madison's notes. is a single point of 600 pages,

if we had a verbatim it would take up a whole wall. however, when it comes to this date ratifying convention, you will find that often they missed, not just isn't our paragraph, sometimes they miss toll speeches. we can document that quite well now for reasons i will explain in a minute. and some people look back on, john marshall said he would have recognized his speech at his name not been attached to it. we can speculate why that was so. and he talked about well, this is the virginia convention with a poor man was forced to sit up in the gallery as people coming in and out. marshall said this meant david robinson was very good with people who were well-prepared and who spoke slowly and having organized set of comments that they were going to make. george mason, was very bad with

people who spoke very softly. james madison. but by gosh, robinson for all of the problems that he faced produces 600 pages of the virginia ratifying debates, and that marvelous event would be lost to history without his efforts. so i must say my heart goes out to him and i'm grateful to the man. okay, back to hudson. this is the problem with the stenographer's. maybe this go was up to this job. second, often they should speech is before the, you know, they would didn't transcribe it and he reprinted them in in newspapers or something. or the newspaper accounts of debates would be collected and published in book form. but before they saw print, sort in book form, this developers sometimes showed them to a speaker corrected him and hudson said that corrects the record. but the last reasons, and i think the reason which is

probably the most damning is they were politically biased. and that is one side of these debates, the federalist one of the constitution ratified were often paid the shorthand meant to do the work, or own the newspapers for which they wrote, and who provided the subsidies that allow these debates to be published. why? because they understood it, they very much, the eloquence and intelligence in their speakers. and they thought they would be giving arguments to people in other states that they could be using our behalf of the constitution. it obviously had less interest and publicize the archives of those who criticize the constitution. and the worst example of this are the published debates of the pennsylvania ratifying convention. it includes only the speeches of two leading federalists.

you would think they were talking to themselves but they are talking to the walls, except one other critics of the constitution interrupted the speaker, and so managed to get his name into the published debates of the pennsylvania ratifying convention. massachusetts isn't quite so bad, but and here i exaggerate a bit for effect. there is a point in these debates were the fellow taking down the notes, it was a day like every other day, the anti-federalists stood up, made their usual trivial objections to the constitution, and the federalists answered them. taking all this nonsense down. you start to wonder about the reliability of what they did right. and this explains i think hudson's conclusion. he said that the records of the state ratifying conventions were so bad that it would be

impossible from them to take them to understand how the ratifiers understood the constitution, that they couldn't serve that purpose. that he was trying to show the possibility of original intent and condemned as. that was bad news for our bridgeless. i take him it was not good news for historians. we do not like to leave very hard uncracked games. okay, so what's happened? there's been a revolution in 25 years and the revolution is coming out of madison, wisconsin, wonderful project in documentary editing called a documentary history of the ratification of the constitution. they are now 22 in print. if there were 20 want in print when my book went to press. of those 21, 14 focus on ratification in individual states.

what did they do? facing editors into the states and ago and all all the archives. they collect everything. they transcribe them. they collate them. they publish them in subsidized volumes. here i am, just an ordinary academic, and i could buy all the volumes. it was marvelous and then i could mark them. with regard to the conventions i think the transformation is the most dramatic. what they do day by day for these conventions is to collate various documents. the official journals of the conventions which are kind of bare bones records. who had officers they elected. what dedicate appeared when. what rules that topic what enemies were appointed. what the vote was. they never tell you what anyone said other than to make a motion. they collate those with

published debates would exist in a series of other sources. newspaper accounts, the private journals kept by delegates or other people up in the galleries who came. i mean, the federal convention was secret, right? we know that some delegates kept notes on what happened at the collate with madison's notes. but here we have not only records of delegates took of what was going on, but people who were sitting up in the balconies listening to this there and in what is i think even more marvelous, a massive private correspondence. but again, this stuff exists, but delegates right to medicine, they would like to washington to tell them what was going on because they were dying with curiosity to know what was going on in the states. so we get information that only what was going on in the hall, what's going on outside the

hall. this is marvelous material. and it makes hudson no longer true. it suddenly has made it possible to write the ratification of the constitution. but this is a very recent accomplishment. when i signed my contract with simon & schuster in 1999, i told them i would have a manuscript in 2004. you might have noticed i didn't make it. indeed, i realize i had no idea what i was getting into today the truth. what i realized that is i literally could not have written this book until the fifth volume on ratification in new york came out, or at least until i had access to material that would be in that volume and it was published only in 2009. now, the project has covered eight states what it has covered all the major ones. and this helps me decide how to

do with a major organizational problem. everybody who writes on the ratification has a terrible time trying to decide how to organize the narrative. how do you tell a clear story for an event that happens in 13 plays, sometimes simultaneously. my solution was to emphasize the four most important states and that's pennsylvania, massachusetts, virginia and new york. and twofold of the other states in, giving each a fair section so they got a coherent, we could give my readers a coherent account of what happened there, but to do it at the appropriate chronological point in the overall history of ratification. this worked out quite well until, well, there are five states left i haven't covered yet. how did i deal with them? it's much easier to fold and and

because four of them didn't have published debates so that was a limited amount that i could say about them, and it turned that there's a tremendous amount that is published i discovered in the 19th century and at the time of the constitutional bicentennial in the late 1980s here also i was more dependent on secondary literature than usual, and some of it is just magnificent. so all of this was with a great help to me, but then i found the north carolina convention, and i thought i could fold it into ghost the last day i was going to finish this book in the on with my life. they had published debates and they were magnificent. different than all the others. in fact, that was one of the strange things about this book. i went to a moment of panic. i had signed a contract to write a book on 13 conventions, discussing the same thing. how could that be anything but deadly boring?

and then i had an epiphany, that many americans and other people spend a good bit of their lives watching the same game night after night? [laughter] and week after week, and the joy -- how can they do that? it's because no game plays out in identical way to any other game. you can't say well, we will compare these innings. it doesn't make any sense. and contact each of these debates, each of these conventions were very much the same. they play out in different ways. and, of course, you don't know the outcome and tell the outcome of rise. and then these two have many surprises. so the net result here i will say although imo delighted to accept the prices, which are opportunity for this book, i have to confess that like many historical books, it's probably like more than most, this is

really a work of collaboration. it is built so solidly on the contributions of documentary editors, the papers of george washington, a documentary history of the ratification of the constitution, and the specialized work of many historians on individual states. people like jerry danya in new hampshire, i mean, he knows the history of the ratification in new hampshire, town by town, house by house, vote by vote. in a lifetime, he spent his lifetime studying it and he shared it with me because he wanted to specialized work read into the general story. if we pretend i was doing him a favor, but i wasn't fooled. he did me a tremendous favor. okay, enough of that. with historians, the question is always so what. the question is what difference does it make and let me propose a couple places where i think it

does make a difference. go back to hudson but i think it does make a difference for interpretations of the constitution. that is for constitutional law in the united states. let me simply say that anyone who, for whatever reason, is interested in knowing how provisions, specific provisions of the constitution were understood, well, the ratification debates, now that we can understand them with so much more authority a wonderful source but perhaps the best of all sources. why? because the conventions went -- sometimes provisions were debated and controversial. sometimes the conventions just went into what i will call informational mode. that is, a delicate will say why did they write the provision on article one, section, in the way

they did? that it can only be suspected in cases of invasion? it's in the massachusetts constitution provision better? then someone would answer. it could be a member of the state's supreme court, a very distinguished jurist. it might be a man who observed in the federal convention. and who knew what it was written the way it was. don't think that your delegates in the back benches were always persuaded. well, that's what you think. deny a farmer. i don't think that -- that's not what is it. and someone else could read it differently. i mean, these were very active and probing debates. and i think that raise of opinion you get get you much more closer into the mindset of the time, then to take an unprecedented example, the

federalist papers which is a knee-jerk response of most generous today. the federalist papers for smaller part of the. they were written to get the constitution ratified in new york. and they were not be on making accusations against their opponents. they were not widely published in the course of the ratification debate best aikido had very little influence outside the state of new york. and perhaps not even there. i don't think they made it very broad in upstate new york. finally, although we tend to think of these as the way of the ages, it turns out in the 1790s in the press, madison and hamilton talking to each other with passages from the federalist. which seemed out of keeping with their current policies. and at one point hamilton said

well, so what? i just don't believe that anymore. there are some things he said i wonder whether he ever believed. i mean, at the end of the federal convention he did say that nothing is further that what he thought country did but he was going to -- it was the best they could get under current circumstances. second i think this is significant for history. the way ipod it ever since i got into this field and became more and more questionable. i always taught as a struggle between federalist and anti-federalist. i was up to the six state when suddenly across my mind that the only documents i was reading a talk about anti-federalists are written by federalists. be country and it was a term of -- it tied in with a lot of baggage. and it groups together people

who were not speaking to each other. and then, of course, i ended up saying i wouldn't use the term transport in the city termed dasher and lets it appeared in a quotation or less the people are so designated for to accept the label. and ike and mamie to using it for critics of the constitution in the upper hudson valley of new york. in the lower hudson valley they prefer to call themselves republicans or federal republicans. in fact, quote anti-federalists often wrote with federal, in the federal farmers, probably the best example. why? this has all kinds of implications but if you say federalists and anti-federalists you automatically have a lot of association with parties. there were no parties. they are preserving the national parties but there was something like them within the states, and if you think national party, there were no federal

committees. there were no parties, period. if you think of it that way, you know, you become very -- i came to realize that we should think instead of a range of obedience, a spectrum of opinions in that only if we look at ideas and strategies changed over the course of the ratification debate could be ever understand why it was ratified. and then i had one other little discovery which may be giving an agenda for the future, that nobody called the first 10 minutes a bill of rights. not jefferson, not medicine, not washington. americans at the time thought there was no similarity between, the first 12 amendments that congress recommend to the 10 that were fine of ratified with their state declarations of rights.

no justice of the supreme court referred to the first 10 amendments as a bill of rights until after the 14th amendment was passed in 1868. indeed, he found one supreme court judges in 1880s that unlike many modern constitutions the united states is federal constitution includes no bill of rights. this is a very modern development in the 20th century. the bill of rights was not on the altar in the library of congress in the 1920s. it didn't make the display until i was moved to the national archives in the 1950s. it had no public appearance until the freedom train in 1947. indeed, i was puzzled i was there when i was writing "american scripture" about news stories that the national archives was restoring the bill of rights. what the devil could they be

restoring? you know, we know that the declaration of independence is put on parchment and second win of the constitution was signed at the end of the convention. it's 10 of the 12 that were passed. so i wrote to the national archives and said what is it you are restoring? and i think the person you received it wasn't happy to receive it. and i got no response. so i wrote to the head of the archives to see if i could get an answer. you, american historian, don't know? then she made it all up what it was. it was like i went and looked. it was congress' official copy of the 12 amendments that were proposed in september 198 1989. so my theory is, the reason they rush you through, some smart kid will say my teacher said there are 10 and there are 12 year. you know, you know.

it's important to know what it is you put on display, but it's very recent to most of our history the declaration of independence that are the most important statement of rights. but finally let me say, i would argue that a good story is its own justification for being, for a book. and from the opening round in pennsylvania where the constitution supporters almost blew it, again saving strategy of massachusetts, the heart stopping decision of new hampshire's ratified convention in february 1788 to adjourned without voting, patrick henry gave a performance at the virginia convention in richmond, the cliffhanger at new york convention, and north carolina stubborn, even after the unamended constitution had the more than nine states vote

required to go into effect the story of the constitutions ratification is one terrific story. and it included wonderful dramatic moments that might editor's favorite was in the massachusetts convention where john hancock was carried in, wrapped as the sources they come in flannels. the man was very popular governor. he had brought the state together after shades of rebellion. he was elected with an overwhelming vote, and have been chosen of the boston delegate to the convention, and the convention immediately made him president but he wasn't there. he was home in his mansion at beacon hill recovering from a case of doubt. it was a political disease come as soon as they knew which way the conventional ago he would get better fast enough. instead the federalists cut a deal and he made his appearance

in this immensely dramatically. i think the votes in the massachusetts convention is almost as dramatic as nobody was 100% sure how it's going to go. there were 364 delegates. it was the biggest of all conventions. the federalist were so uncertain how it was going to go that they try to avoid votes. they said we will have a conversation because if you have a conversation you don't say, all right, we have been talking now for half an hour, let's take a vote. you don't do that. they wouldn't want any votes until he knew how the photo going to go but finally the vote was coming and they thought they had them, but they couldn't be 100% certain. they had to move to a church that was on what's known federal street. they had 364 delegates downstairs, 600-800 people could be comfortably accommodated in the balcony. they were stuffed. people didn't go out for lunch

if they knew that was coming later. they had to be there. every basically square foot of the place was full but there's something called the seller which is in the basement. i gather it was a mezzanine. it was full of people. it was packed. they had sources said it was so silent you can hear a coin drop. all you could hear was the clerk calling out the names of the delegates one by one and their answer, they go or nay. and then you could see people, these are in your minds looking against the list of have expected people to vote and how that would change. and in the end massachusetts voted in favor, 187-68 with nine delegates after, a margin of 19 votes, that means nine swing votes could've gone the other way. but once the vote was done, the bells all over fabulous boston

-- this is like any novel. i couldn't have made this up. i find it so moving, the sides of the convention to the ringing of the bells to i could go on but i better not. patrick henry's wonderful thunderstorm speech where he is in the virginia convention, people in their mansions looking down on the americans deciding the fate, not only of their country but of mankind. and boom, huge thunder, as if they were listening. you know, you couldn't make this stuff up. truth is indeed stranger than fiction. and, finally, i want to say there were such wonderful characters but many of you probably heard of james wilson but anyone whose interest in history have heard of this brilliant if rather arrogant lawyer who became a justice can one of the first supreme court. but what about his opponent, the

self educated irish immigrant william findlay, who have a long and distinguished service in the house of representatives. and by the time he retired, and i think 1818 or so, he was known as another come as the federal findlay. or a young massachusetts lawyer, william signs, from the town of andover who dare to question his own law teacher, the formidable -- and one. or francis dana, our first minister to russia whose oratory left the throngs crying into convention in boston and even some reporters actually spellbound. the reporters forgot to take notes they were so caught up in his oratory. or at johnson space, a farmer from western massachusetts whose heartfelt endorsement of the constitution committed exactly the right moment, or zachariah

johnston who, one observer called, the best speaker at the virginia convention. better than even patrick henry or james madison. and that's saying something because thomas jefferson said that patrick henry was the greatest orator of all time. and that is amazing for jefferson, who truly hated patrick henry. the man was bad mouthing him to his family when he was in his grave for two decades. that doesn't seem very gracious to me. i was personally swayed by james i retail probing analysis of the constitution north you want to first convention but it had to. and also thought his leading opponent, judges in the spends, on good good, and above all there was a langston smith without whose efforts the new convention would probably not have voted to ratify, and his friend and fellow congressmen, nathan dane of massachusetts who said to smith, some of the

wisest, most statesmanlike political council i have encountered in all my readings. that there were so many such men itself significant but it shows that the country was not dependent on a handful of great men. the united states had indeed -- had a deep bench and i was it a deep intellectual but if you're interested in history of ideas, it is very moving to see the debate on the very local level, which concerns issues which are a continued significant of those of us who care about liberty, and the conflict with power. in the end, i don't mean to say that washington wasn't on hamilton was a brilliant or madison wasn't learned in the end however there were others who might have moved forward into and national laws and and sometimes did, but who more often spend their political

lives within their states. they and also their constituents, an important part of this story, invested their minds and their hearts in evaluating the constitution and its probable impact what they repeatedly called millions, yet unborn. that in the end they supported ratification is only part of their gifts to their country. as i say in the book, they made the republic work. it was very satisfying to be able to give them, finally, the place in america may be world history, that they had earned so long ago. it felt like an act of justice, long overdue. and it is also satisfying to have given my country the missing half of its founding story. we have had the easy part, the story of those 55 demigods, as

jefferson called them, who wrote the constitution, now we have the democratic part of the story, the part that tells how an energized people who knew their power and took their responsibilities seriously, shape the future of their nation. perhaps that's the part we need most to know. it brings the story down to earth, gives us models, maybe inspiration, and even hope. thank you. [applause] ..

>> was there any change in the original language, or was everything eventually ratified in its spirity? -- entirety in. >> she asked if there's any change in the language of the constitution. you know, it's a wonderful question pause that's precisely what the issue was. when we talk about federalist and antifederalist, we get locked into dichotomies. they're people for and against the constitution. that really wasn't the issue. one of the things that made this so devisive is the federalists with no authority whatsoever, of course, the federal convention had no authority to make a new government or say it should be ratified or any of that. they said there could be no amendments, you know? that take it or leave it. take it as we wrote it. don't change it, just ratify it. if you want to make changes, well, we've got a procedure in

article v for amendments. george mason said, wait a minute, we have met in secret. the public doesn't know what we're doing. we've had no feedback from the outside. and we should let and, indeed, he and edmund randolph said it is really important that the state conventions be allowed to propose changes to the constitution. you know, the public, the sovereign people should say where this shoe is going to pinch. [laughter] and fix it before they have to wear it every day. the convention said, no. and at this point mason said it is not good to tell the sovereign people, take this or nothing. and he wouldn't sign, nor did randolph, nor did gary. and that was the issue. now, of those who the federalists called antifederalists, some were opposed, but the greater part of

the critics of the constitution simply, they said, we're in a big mess, this is a step forward, but it needs to be fixed. there are places which are ambiguous. i invite you to go home and read the constitution and to pretend you are an american who first encounters it, um, september 20th or something 1787 and read it through. say what did those guys do? and see if you find everything perfectly clear. they said a constitution should be perfectly clear. there shall be no more than one representative for every 30,000. i don't know, maybe you have a bit more intuitive sense of mathematics than me, i had to think really hard to figure out what that meant. it meant you could make it worse but not better, basically. why doesn't it say there shall be one for every 30,000 until the house of representatives gets to an untenable size? so, no, there were no changes,

but the issue was should it be changed first, and most people thought, a good many critics of the constitution thought it should be changed, and it should be changed before it goes into effect because, as patrick henry said, only an idiot signs a contract thinking he can change obnoxious provisions later. it should be changed first, and that the rights of the people are involved. i mean, you know? so, you're right, nothing was changed. and the demand was that things should be changed before it goes into effect. eventually, they settled for proposing changes once it went into effect. why? well, i'm giving you a whole other lecture. five states ratified without asking any amendments. from there on if you wanted amendments prior to the beginning of the new government, you had a procedural nightmare, didn't you? i mean, were they going to have to meet again and consider these amendments? and who was going to write up the amendments? so massachusetts said, well,

we'll ratify, and we propose amendments for subsequent ratification, and that -- of the five next states to meet for, you know, took that solution. it was a compromise for the good of the country, basically. but amendments were the issue, not the constitution. amendments were really the issue. yes. >> as you are in the first state, what happened in delaware? [laughter] >> oh, was sneaky. i mean, the pennsylvanians were talking and talking, and then delaware met and said boom, boom, boom, yes, and they beat pennsylvania. i thought, bingo, right? [laughter] but we don't have an awful lot of records for delaware, and often they say, you know, newspaper, oh, this didn't, wasn't published in delaware. i think delaware got its newspapers from the neighboring states, you know? they had some, some certainly, but that wasn't the only thing

people read here. so that's a little unrealistic. i thought that was -- i just, actually, and i have to say after i've studied the first convention i wrote up something on the pennsylvania convention, and i showed it to a friend of mine, one of the two people to whom the book is dedicated. the other was my mother. he read it, and he said, wait a minute, you're a historian. you're supposed to be neutral. you're in there fighting. i was so angry at the federalists for how arrogant and nasty they were to these other guys, and he said, you've got to back off. and i think it probably is a bit more backed off. but at any rate, i still had something of that attitude, so when delaware zapped 'em, man, i was happy. [laughter] this is great. you know, i've often been at talks where only men ask questions. this is a good crowd. [laughter] now, this isn't to say i won't take any questions from men. [laughter]

now i suppose -- yes. >> yes. i'm interested in the composition of the different state constitutions -- conventions. >> yes. >> so could you just talk a little bit about the compositioning of those conventions that were chosen? >> now composition, you mean what? >> who was actually in those conventions, and did that make much difference -- >> well, it's very different, you know, from state to state, actually, and so you have a different profile. i don't know much about delaware because it's one of the states that has no debates, and although it had, you know, quite active state partisan conflicts, they don't seem -- they seem to have just folded. there was a great consensus delaware was better off ratifying, and they were right. they didn't have to pay import duties, it would go to the nation, it wouldn't go to pennsylvania. and then they would have -- that was great. and it was recognized as a separate state. and, hey, it got two senators.

equal to virginia. i mean, look, delaware came out, oh, boy, they came out very well, and they knew it, so they just ratified, i think. massachusetts, the towns in the west sent their full contingent, almost their full contingent of delegates, and they hadn't been doing that at the state legislature. so although the towns could send as many delegates as they were authorized to send to the lower house of the assembly, in fact, the convention was much bigger than the assembly, and the assembly had been growing in recent years. why? i think they understood finally it was important, you know, that this was going to effect them. and you would have large -- well, i think there were people who were like gristmill owners or farmers, and they often were not as eloquent as the persons of practiced eloquence.

and this is where the federalists thought they had everything, you know, going for them. the lawyers, a lot of clergymen, people who for a living talked publicly, you know? i guess professors are probable. some of them are, some of them are not. anyway, they were used to speaking, and they really thought they could talk circles around these guys and talk them into anything, and it turns out they couldn't. i mean, i think it has something to do with the calvinist background of these new englanders. they were sub born cutses -- stubborn cusses. if they had been raised to tell them the preacher couldn't tell them what the bible said, no one was going to -- they were used to reading documents, and they knew it was important. look, they'd shed their blood, and they knew people who had died in the revolution. ideas were, yes, abstractions, but they were ideas with very

human consequences that they knew, and they didn't want to pay that cost for liberty again. so they were really, you know, they really couldn't be bludgeoned into it, and they certainly had a, had power. and i could go through state after state. i mean, in new york they actually had a wider franchise to vote for the convention than for the legislature. so, you know, you'd find more people voting for convention -- more voters there than on the -- i tell you, it's just a very complicated story, and it differs from one to another. but they were genuinely democratic meetings. and impressive. yes. >> professor maier, one of the things that strikes me about the story is that the constitution, or more precisely the debate over the constitution, was given a lot of procedural legitimacy by the established political order that already existed. the congress had existed under

the articles of confederation, had to send on the constitution with a kind of impresident obama tour that was greater or than what came out of the philadelphia convention. then every state legislature had to schedule and set up procedures for elections to and the scheduling of a ratifying convention. >> right. >> did your researches turn up any machinations in these places? >> well, you know, i think i differ with you a bit. i think, you know, again, one of the reasons i find it so strange that people thought this was just going to go through for sure was how outrageous the federal convention was from a certain perspective. they'd been told that it met for the sole, exclusive purpose of proposing amendments to the convention. instead they meet in secret for four months, and then they say, ah, get rid of the confederation. have we got an idea for you. now, if anybody did this today, we wouldn't give them the time of day, i think.

and then they laid out the ratification procedures, but they had no authority to do, and they laid them out different than what it would take to get an amendment to the articles of confederation ratified. there you did need the consent of congress and of all 13 state legislatures. now all the convention said was that it should be laid before congress. and what did that mean? i mean, even the congress got it and said what's the devil are we supposed to do with this? what it meant is they didn't have to approve it. and all congress did after a big wrangle is to send it off to the states, and then the states called the conventions. but the whole procedure was a little questionable actually. except it had legitimacy in the theory that became established in the course of the revolution, a theory that was necessary to

distinguish constitutional law from ordinary law. and that is that constitutional law was a direct act of legislation by the sovereign people. this begins in massachusetts where it's written, the constitution's written by a separate convention and then submitted to the people in the towns for ratification. that differentiates it from ordinary law. look, this is the basis of our bilevel system of law, constitutional, ordinary law. so that had, that model of constitutionalism had been reasonably established on the massachusetts precedent. it was followed new hampshire in 1784, and madison said the articles of confederation were really no government at all because they hadn't been ratified by the people. so that notion had set in. so american constitutional theory had moved forward in such a way as to justify the procedure. but it was, it was a little, you

know, questionable. >> the legislatures could have interfered. >> oh, yes, they could have. >> they could have stopped it in its tracks. >> yeah, you know, in some ways they've got them between a rock and a hard place, don't they? in that is a astronaut legislature -- state legislature supposed to say to their constituents, sorry, bud, we're not going to let you have a say on this? you know, in the atmosphere of the politics of the revolutionary period, that wouldn't have gone over very well. wouldn't have gone over at all. so i think the legislatures were constrained. >> time for one last question. >> well, thank you -- >> no -- [laughter] >> thank you very much. wonderful questions. [applause]