America’s unique electoral college system was designed to be both democratic and anti-democratic. From the very beginning, it has often been manipulated. As a staunch advocate of taking the initiative in both military and political matters, Alexander Hamilton actively intrigued with the electoral college. In the first presidential election in 1789, Hamilton lobbied with correspondents …
In 1769, at the age of twenty-six, Thomas Jefferson was elected to the colonial Virginia legislature. He proposed but failed to get a bill passed to make it easier for owners to emancipate their slaves. Allied with other young, radical legislators, Jefferson opposed Britain’s new imperial policy that attempted to wield greater control over the …
Alert! Alert! An Attempt to De-Certify the Ratification of Constitution Pennsylvania, 2 January–29 March 1788 During the Revolutionary era, Pennsylvania was arguably the most politically divided state in the Union. This political divisiveness primarily centered around maintaining or replacing the state’s extremely democratic constitution of 1776. Not surprisingly, Pennsylvanians were also divided over the newly …
June 14 is Flag Day. On that day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress resolved “that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” We now honor the “Stars and Stripes” that contains fifty stars …
The signing of America’s three organic documents of the Founding era have a superficial similarity but differ significantly from each other. The signers of the engrossed manuscripts of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution all placed their signatures grouped together by their state delegations arranged geographically north to south in …
Throughout the debate over the ratification of the Constitution and the drafting and adoption of the Bill of Rights, Americans often referred to political and legal writers and writings. A tabulation of these references in the indexes of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights show the frequency …
On Saturday afternoon, 15 September 1787, near the end of the Constitutional Convention, the delegates approved the final draft of the Constitution and ordered it engrossed on parchment to be ready for signing on Monday morning, 17 September. The Convention selected Jacob Shallus, the thirty-seven-year-old assistant clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, to be the calligrapher. …
The Constitutional Convention was called in 1787 to increase the powers of the Confederation Congress and to place restraints on the states. Article I, section 10 of the eventually proposed and ratified Constitution listed a number of powers denied to the states. Some prohibited powers were not controversial, such as the prohibition to enter into …
Most of what we know about the private lives of the Founding generation of Americans comes from their correspondence. To many, letter-writing was an art that was cultivated by instruction and practice. Writing was expensive and often a drudgery. Because of the uncertainties of the mail, some letter-writers kept copies of their correspondence. For most …
Metaphors and similes can be powerful rhetorical devices. What are they? A metaphor compares two unlike objects or ideas and illuminates them in a word or phrase that otherwise might be expressed in many words. In ancient Greece, Aristotle wrote that “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is …