Episode 2 - The Constitution

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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices