David Thomas Konig

Devising liberty : preserving and creating freedom in the new American Republic

Acknowledgements Contributors Introduction David Thomas Konig 1. Political economy and the creation of the Federal Republic Lance Banning 2. The expanding union Peter S. Onuf 3. Land and liberty on the post-revolutionary frontier Alan Taylor 4. The meaning of freedom for waterfront workers Paul A. Gilie 5. The ideas of an informed citizenry in the Early Republic Richard D. Brown 6. Jurisprudence and social policy in the New Republic David Thomas Konig 7. From the bonds of empire to the bonds of matrimony Norma Basch 8. The second great awakening and the market revolution Nathan O. Hatch 9. The problem of slavery in Southern political discourse Jan Lewis Abbreviations Notes Index.

A summary view of the law of British America

Bo Y i85 I the courthouse of Fredericksburg, Virginia, erected in the I730S for Spotsylvania County, no longer suited the needs and dignity of the city government. Besides its evident disrepair, its colonial style was now regarded as outre and offensive to upholders of the august nature of the law as envisioned in antebellum America. One observer asked how such a building could have been erected in the first place, much less used for the lofty and majestic purposes of the law. Calling for its replacement by a more appropriate edifice, he described

Arms and the Man: What Did the Right to “Keep” Arms Mean in the Early Republic?

Just as Virgil linked “arms and the man” in his epic history of Romes origins, Americans have linked the bearing of arms with their own national origins. Regardless of other uses to which his image has been put, the Minuteman who stands guard at Concord reminds us that he stood his ground in 1775 to stop British regulars from seizing assembled weapons at Concord and disarming the Middlesex County militia. Robert Churchill provides us with an entertaining anecdote of a young man to illustrate his claim that such men actually believed that they were protecting their personal right to keep and bear arms. Asserting that he had become ill, the militiaman was “skedaddling home” after his companys engagement with British regulars at Concord in 1775. Though his captains wife told him that “you must not take your gun with you,” he retorted, “Yes, I shall.” His refusal to yield his gun, explains Churchill, “transcended its importance in allowing him to meet his communal obligation. The gun was his, and he believed he had a right to keep it.” But this anecdote, though charming, demands closer examination. Like much in Churchills essay, it reveals that items or statements taken out of context can be misinterpreted and misleading.

Contingency and Constitutionalism in Colonial New York

Of all the comments made by British politicians to describe the United States Constitution, Gladstones remains the most difficult to deny: by calling it “the most wonderful work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man” he covered the true origins of the document in a mantle of consensus, well understood and coherent in intent, and epitomizing the human capacity for reasoned progress. All of these attributes have little favor among American constitutional historians today, but the remark still makes the rounds.