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TAH
Conference - July, 2004
The Eighteenth Century
The Making of the American Constitution
Selected
Bibliography
Professor Peter R. Teachout
Vermont Law School
There are thousands of books and
articles about the Constitutional Period in American history, some general
in scope and coverage, others dealing with specialized topics and
sub-periods. In addition, there are now many other resources
available to students and teachers, such as video recordings of television
series and internet access to special collections. My effort here is
not to attempt to provide an exhaustive survey, which would be impossible,
but rather to offer a highly selective list of works, primary and
secondary, some classics in the field, some more recent, dealing with
certain key themes and events.
- Evolving Notions of Democratic Accountability in
Eighteenth Century America
J.R. Pole, The Gift of Government: Political
Responsibility from the English Restoration to American Independence
(1983)
- Eighteenth Century Colonial Experience
Davis, Donald, Thomas, Wiebe, Wood, "American Society in the
Eighteenth Century," in The Great Republic: A History of the
American People, Vol. 1, pp. 122-49 (2nd. ed., 1981)
- From the American Revolution to Constitutional
Government (1774 - 1801: An Overview
David
McCullough, John Adams (2001)
PBS
Video: Liberty: The American Revolution, 1763-1788
- The Pre-Revolutionary Period
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
(1992)
and The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (1974)
- The First and Second Continental Congress and the
Declaration of Independence (1774-76)
Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of
Independence (1978)
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of
Independence (1998)
- The American Revolutionary War
Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American
Revolution 1763-1776 (1968)
Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (1976)
J. Kirby Martin, Men in Rebellion: Higher Government Leaders and
the Coming of the American Revolution (1973)
Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience
of American Women (1980)
- The First Written Constitutions: State Constitution Making in the
Post-Colonial Period
Allen Nevins, The American States during and after the Revolution,
1775-1789 (1924)
Elisha P. Douglass, Rebels and Democrats (1955)
- The Experience of Government under the Articles of Confederation
(1781-1788)
Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation...1774-1781
(1940
and The New Nation...1781-1789 (1950)
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
(1969)
Forest McDonald, E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American
Republic, 1776-1790 (1965)
- The Philadelphia Convention: The Making of the U.S. Constitution
(1787)
Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making
of the Constitution (1996)
Garry Wills James Madison (2002)
Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
(1913)
Forrest McDonald, We the People (1958)
Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787
(1911, 1937)
- The Ratification Debates (1787-1788)
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, The Federalist Papers
(1788)
Mercy Otis Warren, Observations on the new Constitution and on the
Federal and State Conventions by a Columbian Patriot (Boston 1788)
Garry Wills, Explaining America: The Federalist (1981)
- Establishing the New Federal Government (1789-1801)
John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1789-1801 (1960)
Richard Buel, Jr., Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American
Politics, 1789-1815 (1972)
Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican
Government (1970)
- Adding the Bill of Rights (1791)
Robert A. Rutland, The Birth of the Bill of Rights 1776-1791
(1955)
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