The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution

by Lorri Glover

Overview

The history of the 1788 Virginia Ratification Convention explores the Constitutional debates that decided the nation’s fate and still resonate today.
 
In May 1788, elected delegates from every county in Virginia gathered in Richmond where they would either accept or reject the highly controversial United States Constitution. The rest of the country kept an anxious vigil, keenly aware that without Virginia—the young Republic’s largest and most populous state—the Constitution was doomed.
 
In The Fate of the Revolution, Lorri Glover explains why Virginia’s wrangling over ratification led to such heated political debate. Virginians were roughly split in their opinions, as were the delegates they elected. Patrick Henry, for example, the greatest orator of the age, opposed James Madison, the intellectual force behind the Constitution. The two sides were so evenly matched that in the last days of the convention, the savviest political observers still couldn’t predict the outcome.
 
Mining an incredible wealth of sources, including letters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and transcripts, Glover brings these political discussions to life, exploring the constitutional questions that echo across American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421420035
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	04/27/2021
Series:	Witness to History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	985,989
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lorri Glover is the John Francis Bannon Endowed Chair in the Department of History at Saint Louis University. She is the author of Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries.

Table of Contents

Prologue
1. Fall 1787, First Reactions
2. Winter 1787–1788, Jockeying for Power
3. Spring 1788, Electing the Delegates
4. Summer 1788, Debating in Richmond
5. Summer 1788, Deciding the Question and the Future
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Suggested Further Reading
Index

What People are Saying About This

Peter S. Onuf

The best account of Virginia's ratification now available. Glover succeeds in giving readers a tightly focused and comprehensive narrative of Virginia's ratification that centers on key personalities. An astute introduction to the history of the American founding.

Todd Estes

This well-written and thoroughly researched account of the Virginia ratifying convention not only tells a great story filled with key individuals and their debates over fundamental issues, it also explains why ratification in Virgina worked the way it did and why it mattered so much to the new nation.

From the Publisher

The best account of Virginia's ratification now available. Glover succeeds in giving readers a tightly focused and comprehensive narrative of Virginia's ratification that centers on key personalities. An astute introduction to the history of the American founding.
—Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia, author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood

This well-written and thoroughly researched account of the Virginia ratifying convention not only tells a great story filled with key individuals and their debates over fundamental issues, it also explains why ratification in Virgina worked the way it did and why it mattered so much to the new nation.
—Todd Estes, author of The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture

Editorial Reviews

. . . This work provides a fresh and informative account, despite slighting portions of the story. Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.
—Choice

Readers unfamiliar with the basic outline of the arguments in Richmond will understand them clearly after reading Glover’s text.
—Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

Glover’s page-turning account of the Virginia ratification . . . does provide a short, readable book that emphasizes the moment’s contingency. . . This is an excellent book, perfect for undergraduate seminars and surveys that hope to introduce students to this pivotal moment in American history.
—H-Net Reviews

. . . Lorri Glover's much-needed work fills a hole in the literature and would serve as an excellent text for undergraduates interested in the conceptual and political bridges bindng the Confederation period to the early republic.
—The Journal of Southern History

From the Publisher

Glover’s page-turning account of the Virginia ratification . . . does provide a short, readable book that emphasizes the moment’s contingency. . . This is an excellent book, perfect for undergraduate seminars and surveys that hope to introduce students to this pivotal moment in American history.

H-Net Reviews

. . . Lorri Glover's much-needed work fills a hole in the literature and would serve as an excellent text for undergraduates interested in the conceptual and political bridges bindng the Confederation period to the early republic.

The Journal of Southern History

. . . This work provides a fresh and informative account, despite slighting portions of the story. Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.

Choice

Readers unfamiliar with the basic outline of the arguments in Richmond will understand them clearly after reading Glover’s text.

Virginia Magazine of History and Biography