On spine: The first Federal elections, 1788-1790.Vols. 2-3: Gordon DenBoer, editor, Lucy Trumbull Brown, associate editor, Charles D. Hagermann, editorial assistant; v. 4: Gordon DenBoer, editor ... [et al.]. Includes bibliographies and indexes.

This is the first volume of an ambitious project which, when completed, will offer to the historian of early America the first readily accessible account of the nation's first elections. Volume I documents the first federal elections in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. This book also covers the Constitution, the Confederation Congress, and federal elections, as well as the Confederation Congress and the First Federal Election Ordinance of September 13th, 1788. Included in the three-volume set are hundreds of documents which together illuminate the critical political events of the time and the men who forged them. The documents are both official ones--legislative journals, debates, and laws relating to the elections--and unofficial ones, including material from letters, diaries, newspapers, broadsides, and other sources. The subjects treated include the providing for the elections by the Confederation Congress; public and private commentary prior to the elections; and summaries of official and unofficial actions for each of the thirteen original states. The editors have provided biographical sketches of the candidates for election and sketches of the political events of the time in introductions, headnotes, and editorial notes, in order to place the documents in their historical context. These documents, most of which have been available to scholars only under the most difficult of circumstances, provided the basis for a more complete understanding of the fundamental political acts required to implement the Constitution after its ratification: the election of Representatives, Senators, Electors, and a President--the men who would give shape and meaning to the government created by the Constitution. Scholars and students of early American history, politics, and law will refer to these volumes frequently, in order to gain a fuller comprehension of the men, the events, and the temper of the times that led to the establishment of our early federal government.

This is the first volume of an ambitious project which, when completed, will offer to the historian of early America the first readily accessible account of the nation's first elections. Volume I documents the first federal elections in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. This book also covers the Constitution, the Confederation Congress, and federal elections, as well as the Confederation Congress and the First Federal Election Ordinance of September 13th, 1788. Included in the three-volume set are hundreds of documents which together illuminate the critical political events of the time and the men who forged them. The documents are both official ones--legislative journals, debates, and laws relating to the elections--and unofficial ones, including material from letters, diaries, newspapers, broadsides, and other sources. The subjects treated include the providing for the elections by the Confederation Congress; public and private commentary prior to the elections; and summaries of official and unofficial actions for each of the thirteen original states. The editors have provided biographical sketches of the candidates for election and sketches of the political events of the time in introductions, headnotes, and editorial notes, in order to place the documents in their historical context. These documents, most of which have been available to scholars only under the most difficult of circumstances, provided the basis for a more complete understanding of the fundamental political acts required to implement the Constitution after its ratification: the election of Representatives, Senators, Electors, and a President--the men who would give shape and meaning to the government created by the Constitution. Scholars and students of early American history, politics, and law will refer to these volumes frequently, in order to gain a fuller comprehension of the men, the events, and the temper of the times that led to the establishment of our early federal government.

On spine: The first Federal elections, 1788-1790.Vols. 2-3: Gordon DenBoer, editor, Lucy Trumbull Brown, associate editor, Charles D. Hagermann, editorial assistant; v. 4: Gordon DenBoer, editor ... [et al.]. Includes bibliographies and indexes.

In his latest book, Presidential Elections and Majority Rule, Edward Foley asks how the American electoral system can better represent the people. What kind of winner truly reflects the nation's votes: the plurality winners of winner-takes-all elections, as currently used, or the majority-preferred winners of a reformed system? How do third-party candidates affect American presidential elections? What, if anything, would change in a two-candidate run-off?And how can electoral reform be implemented without sowing chaos? Ultimately, Foley outlines a solution in which the Electoral College can be restored to its original majoritarian ideals through state law rather than Constitutional amendment.

After the Revolution, Americans faced the challenge of expanding representative government throughout an extensive territory. The complex process of adapting republicanism to a vast area generated many conflicts over representation in both states and the nation—conflicts that produced a division between the large states and the small states. Using concepts of historical geography, Rosemarie Zagarri examines how Americans' notions about space influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution and the shaping of the nation's political institutions. In The Politics of Size, Zagarri offers a bold explanation of political alignments in the early republic. The split between large and small states emerged, she asserts, not at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 but in the years before, during debates over the relocation of state capitals and the reapportionment of state legislatures. The local conflicts culminated in the fierce struggle between the two factions at the federal convention. Far from ending there, the division persisted well into the nineteenth century, resurfacing when Congress discussed such controversial issues as congressional redistricting, the selection of presidential electors, and the reapportionment of the House of Representatives. Only in 1850 did the conflict based on state size merge with, and become subsumed by, the growing controversy between North and South.

Explores how the 1789 congressional election between two future presidents with differing views on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights influenced the destiny of the United States.

Eloquently written and exhaustively researched, Principle and Interest provides a unique perspective on a range of topics--revolutionary ideology, political economy, the mechanics of party organization--central to an understanding of the period.

Fourteen individual state essays elucidate the complexitites of local and regional interests that shaped the debate over individual rights and the eventual adoption of the Bill of Rights.