Constitutional Convention of 1787

<b>This history of the 1787 Constitutional Convention uses a chronological narrative format to capture the complexity messiness and unfolding daily drama behind the writing of the U.S. Constitution as well as the role of contingency in that process.</b><br/><br/>The Framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a novel republican form of government to replace the failing Confederation one that would divide power between the federal government and the states launching a new phase of the American experiment in representative democracy. Not until the end of the American Civil War nearly a century later would it become clear as Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg Address that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.<br/><br/><i>The Constitutional Convention of 1787: A Reference Guide</i> provides an invaluable guide covering the background to the convention the convention itself the ratification of the Constitution and the adoption of the Bill of Rights. In addition to the narrative itself the story of the convention is supplemented with a detailed chronology a rich selection of primary source documents 15 biographical sketches of convention delegates and a comprehensive bibliographical essay. Based largely on primary sources the book also weighs in on some of the historiographical debates that have taken place among scholars about the convention.