Unruly Americans and the origins of the Constitution / Woody Holton

Includes index.

Bricks without straw : grievances -- The fault is all your own : rebuttals -- To relieve the distressed : demands -- Save the people : requisition -- Who will call this justice? : quarrels -- Idle drones: economics -- The fate of republican govt : redemption -- A revolution which ought to be glorious : disenchantment -- A murmuring underneath : rebellion -- Excess of democracy? : reform -- The house on fire : credit -- Divide et impera : statecraft -- More adequate to the purposes : revenue -- Take up the reins : ratification -- More productive and less oppressive : taxes -- As if impounded : consolidation.

"Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the Framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The Framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America's post-Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They believed too many meddling Americans exercised too much influence over state and national policies. That the Framers were only partially successful in curtailing citizens' rights is due to the reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans." "If not to protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people, what motivated the Framers? In Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Holton presents the startling discovery that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the Constitution, Holton captures how the Framers' original Constitution was received by average Americans and how the same class of Americans that produced Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere."--BOOK JACKET.