Changes

Lorri Glover is the John Francis Bannon Professor of History at Saint Louis University. She has written extensively about the early American Republic and the founding fathers. The Fate of the Revolution is her sixth book on this topic. She has also written <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300219741/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0300219741&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=6f94c4572ea76fadf82aa4a8591a17de Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries]</i> (Yale University Press, 2014), <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ED13T4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001ED13T4&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=b0bcea97a551378c04128bb391e8ad1c The Shipwreck that Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and The Fate of America]</i>, with co-author with Daniel Blake Smith (Henry Holt Publishers, 2008), <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801898218/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0801898218&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=0c38c621f7bd570d1c164a998b7c5cd4 Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation]</i> (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), and finally <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801864747/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0801864747&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=0c82e5abfb01bba8a038964afe6f4664 All Our Relations: Blood Ties and Emotional Bonds Among the Early South Carolina Gentry]</i> (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

Absolutely, I agree. We’ve made “The Founders” into a single, timeless monolith. The truth is much messier and fluid and, I think, much more interesting and inspiring. Leading members of the Revolutionary generation disagreed vehemently about the Constitution, and many changed their minds over time. The best way to think about the question of the “original” intentions of the founders is to ask “who?” and "when?” Take just James Madison. In 1787-1788, he argued that a Bill of Rights was completely unnecessary. By 1790, he was leading the effort in the U.S. Congress to create one and get it ratified. Between 1787 and 1790 Madison was probably George Washington’s most trusted ally. But soon thereafter Madison was partnering with Thomas Jefferson to organize an opposition faction to President Washington—because they did not agree with his interpretations of the Constitution. So, there were not only a variety of views held by different people of this era. Men changed their minds over time, too. Madison cautioned us against originalism: late in his life he wrote that the work of the framers at the Philadelphia Convention “could never be regarded as the oracular guide” to the Constitution. “Life and validity were breathed into it, by the voice of the people, speaking through the several state conventions.” Whether we like it or not, we have always reinterpreted the Constitution to fit the shifting times.

I was surprised over and over again. My favorite surprise came just after the final vote in Virginia. The New Hampshire and New York conventions were meeting at the same time as the Virginians, and as they debated, eight of the required nine states had already ratified. Alexander Hamilton, working for ratification in New York, had coordinated a team of riders in all three convention cities to speed to the other two locations as soon as any final vote occurred. As the Virginians began their last days of debate, they had no way of knowing that New Hampshire ratified on June 21. Virginians thought they were the 9th state when they ratified on June 25. Sometime before dawn on June 28, two riders, one from Richmond and other carrying the news from New Hampshire, met at a tavern in Alexandria. They became the first two men to know that both New Hampshire and Virginia had ratified, and the Constitution would become law.