by Woody Holton
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Product Description
Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution
Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution’s origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America’s post–Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They believed too many middling Americans exercised too much influence over state and national policies. That the framers were only partially successful in curtailing citizen rights is due to the reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans.
If not to protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people, what motivated the framers? In Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Holton provides the startling discovery that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the Constitution, Holton captures how the same class of Americans that produced Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere.
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Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 High recommended alternate take on the origins of the US constitution, 2008-07-06
The general story told in school - original US articles of confederation weak, needed to form a strong national government, Constitution created. Everyone happy. Rah rah rah. As in most stories like this, the actual tale of the formation of a new government is trickier, with multiple factions and views involved.
Most of the US constitution issues involves debt structures and taxation, which are complex issues, particularly since 18th century finance was a little different than current issues. The author takes on communicating this complex task admirably. His thesis, that the constitution ended up a balance of the defense of elitist economic interests and individual rights for all, particularly with the insistence of the addition of the bill of rights.
The overall tone of the book, though with a alternate version of history, is surprisingly not harsh, rather breezy, and sometimes amusing.
I highly recommend this book along with more traditional texts regarding the creation of the US constitution.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
A Friendlier Version of Charles Beard's and Howard Zinn's rendition, 2008-06-01
This history, told mostly from the vantage point of the average colonial American, rather than from the traditional vantage point of the landed gentry, has a lot to offer in untwisting the mythology of how our Constitution came about.
It is basically a story about the chaos that ensued when all the contending forces -- from the grassroots upwards are thrown into the mix; and all side's views and interests are taken into account. What ensued in 1787 was not a pretty picture. That the author was able to capture this unruliness is a tribute to his skill, and in the end is a much fuller, much more honest and thus a more believable history than the sugarcoated version we have come to accept and revere as the true national story.
Woody Holton is not the first, the only, nor will he be the last historian to note that our founding fathers were an aristocratic and very much anti-democratic bunch, who were as careful and skillful at protecting their own economic interests as they were concerned about shaping a "people's democracy" through the details of the Constitution. And while this book does not go so far as to suggest that the overlapping interests of the landed gentry amounted to a silent reactionary conspiracy, as Charles Beard does in his "An Economic Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution," or as Howard Zinn leaves hanging in the air in his "A People's History of the United States," it does leave plenty of room for the careful reader to draw his own speculative conclusions.
The crux of the matter (and of the book) is that due to the rebellious attitudes and actions of the average colonial citizen, the framers (representing the interests mostly of the landed gentry) were worried about the post-revolutionary slide into "a real people's democracy." Without the heavy-handed intervention of the framers, the average colonial Joe-blow would have exercised an even greater influence over state and national policies than that granted them by the compromises that eventually ended in the Constitution that we now have. Whether the alternative would have been better than what we have, is arguable.
Correctly, Holton makes these average colonial citizens, the real "unsung heroes" of the Constitution, as it was their tenacity and forbearance, their refusal to be dictated to and looked down upon, their agitation in the streets as often as necessary to defend what they viewed as their inherent rights and interests that led to the Constitution we now have. Shay's rebellion is just the most "written about" of the many rebellions that took place during those very hectic times.
As one would expect, most of the debate, and the subtext of the competing interests, were shrouded in economic complexity, arcania and details of that era. For it is at this level that the democracy we have come to enjoy really gets played out. Altogether, Horton's rendition makes us better understand why we are still caught up in the same time warp, with the moneyed interests still exercising undue influence over national policy. Pulling this off without leaving the reader with the feeling that he had an axe to grind was no mean trick, and makes for very interesting reading to boot. Five Stars
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 You'll Never Feel the Same About the Founding Fathers After Reading This Book, 2008-04-15
Imagine this conundrum; governments, both state and national, pay their debts and bills with bonds, scrip, and promissory notes instead of hard currency or gold and silver coin. And then these same governments turn around and demand tax payments to themselves in hard currency or gold ONLY.(And very HIGH tax payments to boot!)
As one might intuit, this scenario is a prescription for financial distress if not out right rebellion and this is precisely what occurred in the thirteen states during the period when the Articles of Confederation were in effect. Mobs of ex-soldiers and foreclosed upon taxpayers laid siege to state legislatures demanding relief [p.148], closed courts to prevent foreclosures, and otherwise engaged in massive grass root resistance to tax collection efforts [p.153]. The worst of it being the Shay's Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786 [p.11].
Holton's thesis is that the economic elites of the new American state were terrified by all this and set out to take the people's hands off the levers of power to the greatest extent possible. It sure didn't hurt that many, many of the constitution's proponents (and their families and friends) were bondholders, creditors, and land speculators either, notes Holton, who follows in the "Cui Bono" school of economic history and is solidly in the tradition of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of The United States by Charles A. Beard (1913) and People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) by Howard Zinn (1980) [p.157].
The constitution that the ruling elites foisted on the American people to supplant the Articles says Holton, "...managed to construct a national government that was considerably less democratic than even the most conservative of the state constitutions" [p.211].
Some of the previous reviewers have made the criticism that Holton should have explained the arcana of institutional debt arrangements of those days better. I disagree. Holton explains these things well enough for most laymen to understand and going into greater detail would only interrupt the narrative flow to no great benefit.
I recommend this book as did the National Book Award nomination committee which selected it as one of the finalists for 2007.
9 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
 Origins, 2008-02-14
A book citing one Herman Husband more than Benjamin Franklin on the background to the making of the U.S. constitution. Professor Holton goes out of his way to avoid the Founders in his economic history of our early years as a country, while concentrating on the concerns of the farmers and other middling folk who made up the bulk of the population. Also, a potential reader looking for much on the Bill of Rights should look elsewhere.
While grudgingly acknowledging that our constitution has worked in practice, the professor clearly yearns for the more directly democratic operations that were in place in each of the thirteen states of the old Confederation. He sympathizes with the farmers of the time who wanted to change the terms of the various bonds issued by the states and national government and thus avoid onerous taxation.
(I think in making his argument he unfairly casts Mrs. John Adams in the role of some high, wealthy and almost nefarious speculator in government paper. While Abigail certainly invested in government bonds while her husband was abroad -- in service to his country and at great personal sacrifice -- the Adamses were not a wealthy family.)
"Unruly Americans" provides a populist's view that, while interesting, has little room for the higher motives of those great men who crafted a novel governing document that has stood the test of time.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
A Fine Revisionist Perspective on the Adoption of the Constitution, Especially Helpful in Coming to Grips with Personal Liberty, 2008-01-27
The nature of the Constitution, as well as the intention of its framers, has long been debated by historians. "Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution" offers an interesting and instructive new perspective on this debate by suggesting that what emerged from the Constitutional convention and its ratification was especially democratic not so much because of the majority of the efforts of the framers themselves--although they did believe in basic democratic principles--but because of opponents to the Constitution who worked hard for concessions and protections that have been critical to the effective functioning of the nation since that time.
In essence, author Woody Holton, professor of history at the University of Richmond, asserts that critical cadre of such advocates was a part of the convention in Philadelphia drafting the Constitution but even more emerged in the various states during the ratification debates. The author makes a compelling case for the success of these individuals in juggling a variety of competing interests while constructing a bulwark that would preserve personal liberty. It was these "unruly Americans," in the author's phraseology, which ensured individual rights. He analyzes and celebrates the actions of these people to rise up and take action when those in powerful positions would seek to curtail liberty.
This book, of course, is very much a work of its time and place. The author's juxtaposition of political perspectives and their conflict over a cornerstone of democratic principles--individual rights and liberty--offers an analogy for our own day and the efforts to curtail civil liberties in the aftermath of 9/11.
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