ISBN Contested Conventions: The Struggle to Establish the Constitution and Save the Union, 1787-1789 book History English 312 pages

The author examines the crisis that made the establishment of the US Constitution possible, arguing that the main concern of the framers and ratifiers were the issues driving Americans apart. In the first section, he describes the two most divisive issues before the Philadelphia Convention, that led delegations to threaten to leave the Convention: whether states would be represented equally or proportionally in the proposed federal legislature and whether slaves would be counted in the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives. The second part considers the first nine state conventions, particularly the Massachusetts convention, and the ratification by Virginia, New York, and North Carolina.