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Michael J. Klarman

The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution Reprint Edition

by Michael J. Klarman (Author)

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Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them "all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views." One need not deny that the Framers had good intentions in order to believe that they also had interests. Based on prodigious research and told largely through the voices of the participants, Michael Klarman's The Framers' Coup narrates how the Framers' clashing interests shaped the Constitution--and American history itself.

The Philadelphia convention could easily have been a failure, and the risk of collapse was always present. Had the convention dissolved, any number of adverse outcomes could have resulted, including civil war or a reversion to monarchy. Not only does Klarman capture the knife's-edge atmosphere of the convention, he populates his narrative with riveting and colorful stories: the rebellion of debtor farmers in Massachusetts; George Washington's uncertainty about whether to attend; Gunning Bedford's threat to turn to a European prince if the small states were denied equal representation in the Senate; slave staters' threats to take their marbles and go home if denied representation for their slaves; Hamilton's quasi-monarchist speech to the convention; and Patrick Henry's herculean efforts to defeat the Constitution in Virginia through demagoguery and conspiracy theories.

The Framers' Coup is more than a compendium of great stories, however, and the powerful arguments that feature throughout will reshape our understanding of the nation's founding. Simply put, the Constitutional Convention almost didn't happen, and once it happened, it almost failed. Even after the convention succeeded, the Constitution it produced almost failed to be ratified. Just as importantly, the Constitution was hardly the product of philosophical reflections by brilliant, disinterested statesmen, but rather ordinary interest group politics. Multiple conflicting interests had a say, from creditors and debtors to city dwellers and backwoodsmen. The upper class overwhelmingly supported the Constitution; many working class colonists were more dubious. Slave states and nonslave states had different perspectives on how well the Constitution served their interests.

Ultimately, both the Constitution's content and its ratification process raise troubling questions about democratic legitimacy. The Federalists were eager to avoid full-fledged democratic deliberation over the Constitution, and the document that was ratified was stacked in favor of their preferences. In terms of substance, the Constitution was a significant departure from the more democratic state constitutions of the 1770s. Definitive and authoritative, The Framers' Coup explains why the Framers preferred such a constitution and how they managed to persuade the country to adopt it. We have lived with the consequences, both positive and negative, ever since.

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ISBN-10

0190865962
ISBN-13

978-0190865962
Edition

Reprint
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

July 1, 2018
Language

English
Dimensions

5.8 x 1.9 x 9 inches
Print length

880 pages

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The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Klarman...offers a pragmatic, even quotidian, explanation, taking the reader through the most minute historical detail and presenting quite literally everything anyone interested in the coming-to-be of the US Constitution would possibly want: theory, philosophy, history, theology, religion, politics, economics-and just plain random chance. And he weaves it all together with a master storyteller's ear for just the right phrase and just the right dramatic line. This reviewer is amazed by what the author has accomplished. This is not the first thing he's written, and yet it feels like something one would spend an entire academic career writing. The documentation is astonishing, and is alone worth the price of this (extremely large!) volume. This reviewer had a grand time reading this, and cannot wait to do it again. This is an amazing piece of work....Essential"--M. Berheide, CHOICE

"The central strength of this book is its deep familiarity with primary sources"--John R. Vile, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"A magisterial history of the creation of the United States Constitution... In crisp, precise style, and without undue reverence for the framers or their handiwork, Klarman explores in great depth, with ample illustrative quotations, the varying proposals and the heated arguments for and against them... A monumental project carried off to a high degree of excellence... Constitutional scholars will find this thorough and authoritative work indispensable reading."--Kirkus, Starred Review

"Michael Klarman has written the best single-volume analysis of the flaws in the Articles of Confederation that led to the Constitutional Convention, the debate in that Convention, the ratification of the proposed Constitution, and the drafting and adoption of the Bill of Rights. With great insight, Klarman explains the complexities of America's postwar economic, political, and constitutional struggles, showing how a people who fought a long war for their rights could then approve a democracy-limiting Constitution that greatly restricted those rights. Klarman commands the documentary sources like no other historian. His page-turning narrative is equal to the epic story he unveils. Every serious scholar of the period must read this masterful work."--John Kaminski, Director, Center for the Study of the American Constitution, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"The Framers' Coup is the first comprehensive account of the entire struggle for the United States Constitution, from the inception of the amalgamating impulse in the early 1780s all the way through to the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. A lot of us who write books about the Constitution are about to see our royalties trail off, because Michael Klarman, in a brisk narrative, deftly summarizes all the major interpretations in developing his own provocative and persuasive take. I for one will take my lumps, because this book is a beaut."--Woody Holton, Bancroft Prize winner and author of Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution

"At last, we have a definitive account of the entire Framing period. Klarman has brought to the task the narrative skill and situation sense of a historian, the attention to detail and language of a lawyer, and the wisdom and insight of the great scholar that he is."--Louis Michael Seidman, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center

"The fullest explanation of the origins of the Constitution that we are ever likely to get in a single volume. Klarman ably shows how an interest-ridden Constitutional Convention that was fearful of democracy nevertheless created a document that transcended those interests and became the basis for a democracy that has survived for over two centuries."--Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution

"This remarkable book tells a gripping story of how the Constitution, often lauded as principled and visionary, was the work of intensely political individuals who were preoccupied with the issues of their day but were still able to accomplish something the nation needed. If you are interested in the Constitution and you do not read this book, you are making a big mistake."--David A. Strauss, Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School

"In this thoroughly researched volume, Michael Klarman gives us a book that has strangely gone unwritten: a comprehensive account of the adoption of the Constitution, from the reform initiatives of the 1780s through the ratification of the first amendments in 1791. Anyone who wants to understand the origins and character of the American constitutional project will need to wrestle with Klarman's incisive and balanced judgments."--Jack Rakove, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Original Meanings

"Impressive... [Michael Klarman] digs deeper into the primary sources than any of his predecessors.. no one has so carefully sifted the constitutional debates of the entire decade of the 1780's and brought them into a single cohesive interpretation focused on economics."--New Republic

"Magisterial... The Framers' Coup might well be the best book ever written on the founders and their handiwork. With impressive, even loving detail, and mostly emphasizing historical facts rather than his own opinions, Klarman conjures up the framers' whole world... riveting."--Cass Sunstein, The New Rambler

"This boldly themed and fast-paced book is both comprehensive and corrective."--The Harvard Law Bulletin

"The book has the authority and elegance of a reference work written for the ages... Rich with voices and insights... often revelatory."--Harvard Magazine

Book Description

A masterful history of the creation and ratification of the Constitution by a Bancroft Prize-winning historian.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 1, 2018
Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 880 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0190865962
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0190865962
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.52 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.8 x 1.9 x 9 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #617,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #42 in General Constitutional Law
- #171 in U.S. Revolution & Founding History
- #254 in Constitutions (Books)
Customer Reviews:
(277)

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Customers say

Customers find this book engaging and well-written, with tons of useful footnotes and detailed accounts of characters and events. Moreover, they appreciate how it allows readers to easily follow complex political schemes, and one customer notes it provides a thorough history of the constitutional convention. Additionally, the book is easy to read and serves as a definitive study of the U.S. Constitution.

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27 customers mention content, 26 positive, 1 negative

Customers find the book engaging and interesting, with one customer noting its comprehensive coverage of America's creation.

...Fascinating, informative and wondrous. A great and thought provoking read.Read more

Excellent. An indepth single volume covering the founding era from the sources of the Revolution to the ratification of the Constitution.Read more

...A worthwhile read.Read more

It was a fascinating and easy read....Read more

25 customers mention informative, 24 positive, 1 negative

Customers find the book very informative, describing it as a definitive study with tons of useful footnotes.

This is an informative account of how the constitution came to be. It is heavy going in points, and sometimes a bit repetitive....Read more

...Professor Klarman has a way of writing that makes history come alive. I highly recommend it.Read more

...Nevertheless, it is an exhaustive and detailed account of how the U.S. Constitution came to be, starting with the failed Confederation and through...Read more

...Exquisitely written and documented. For a layperson, it is a tour de force! I loved it. Some readers complain it is too detailed....Read more

9 customers mention comprehensive, 7 positive, 2 negative

Customers find the book comprehensive and well-structured, allowing readers to easily follow the most complicated political schemes. One customer notes it provides a thorough history of the constitutional convention, while another mentions it offers an objective look at the framers' intent.

...rather than using pronouns, allows the reader to easily follow the most complicated of political schemes - which were abundant if not relentless!...Read more

...This is the most comprehensive account of the origins of the US constitution.Read more

...The Framers' Coup provides a look into the constitutional convention, the influential players, and perhaps just as importantly, each of the state...Read more

...by a highly selective presentation of evidence in support of an unsustainable thesis....Read more

8 customers mention narrative, 7 positive, 1 negative

Customers appreciate the narrative of the book, with one review highlighting its detailed accounts of characters and events, while another describes it as an amazing story of negotiated compromise.

Outstanding ! The best, Well-organized, narrative and attention-holding read I've ever had in yesrs on the subject....Read more

...in our system of government and how it came to be, this book tells an excellent story.Read more

...US Constitution and Bill if Rights were created as an amazing story of negotiated compromise between very divergent political interests among the 13...Read more

...Still, the argument is rendered well and in quite readable fashion. As such, this becomes a very useful volume....Read more

8 customers mention writing style, 8 positive, 0 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book.

A well written book....Read more

Great stuff finally we get it all in one well written and complete effort!!!Read more

Klarman's work is a comprehensive, beautifully written account of the founding of the constitution. It is a wonderful single-volume account....Read more

...Beautifully written and courageously complete in one volume.Read more

7 customers mention readability, 6 positive, 1 negative

Customers find the book easy to read, with one mentioning it is written in an accessible style that a fairly literate person can understand.

Loving this book. Haven't yet finished, but it's easy to read and I'm learning a lot, too....Read more

This is a very well written and pretty easy read that teaches us a lot about the making of the constitution - what went into it, what was on the...Read more

It was a fascinating and easy read....Read more

...A lot of great detail in an accessible style....Read more

6 customers mention detailed, 5 positive, 1 negative

Customers appreciate the book's detailed presentation.

...Nevertheless, it is an exhaustive and detailed account of how the U.S. Constitution came to be, starting with the failed Confederation and through...Read more

This book tabulates, in remarkable detail, the arguments made about the content of the US Constitution during the call for the Constitutional...Read more

Very interesting and detailedRead more

...A lot of great detail in an accessible style....Read more

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Marvin Fretwell
Probably the most thorough history of our Constitution
Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2025
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

A Thorough History of the making of our constitution. Exquisitely written and documented. For a layperson, it is a tour de force! I loved it.

Some readers complain it is too detailed. They should get the Readers Digest condensed version when it comes out. This is a serious scholar's book.

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Steven Peterson
Was the Constitution the result of a coup?
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2017
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
The thesis of this book is hardly brand new. Works going back decades have noted that the Constitutional Convention was something, metaphorically, akin to a coup against changes in political power occurring during and after the Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation--with ordinary people seeing an increase in power at that time. Only to see that power slowly ebb. Charles Beard made an early argument consistent with this. Later, historian Jackson Turner Main provided evidence consistent with this perspective. Thus, the book's thesis is not an extraordinary revelation.

Still, the argument is rendered well and in quite readable fashion. As such, this becomes a very useful volume. It covers actions by those opposed to the Articles of Confederation (the American Constitution adopted as a result of the Revolutionary War). After the war, faults of the Articles perplexed many of "the better sort." There were efforts to address the perceived shortcomings of the Articles--culminating in the Constitutional Convention. Then, the ratification struggle, with the supporters of the Constitution ending up winning. A good analysis of why this happened--when in a number of states, a majority of delegates to the state conventions were elected to oppose the proposed Constitution. But the supporters of the Constitution won out in the end.

Recommended for those who want to understand how the Constitution came about. . . .

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MT57
A valuable contribution to research, misleadingly titled
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2020
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
This book tabulates, in remarkable detail, the arguments made about the content of the US Constitution during the call for the Constitutional convention, the convention itself and the campaign to ratify it. At every step of the way, the author tells the reader who was arguing what about a given issue. It is a remarkable reference work. Unfortunately, after 300 pages or so, one’s eyes do glaze over. When I was a law student, this was one of the components of studying cases in class and in preparation for class. The author is a Con law professor so he seems to have taken that same approach to the Constitution. It is useful for sure, just not exciting.

One theme that emerges is the remarkable extent to which the Framers were reacting to aggressive pursuit in some states of relief from debts. In Rhode Island and central to western Massachusetts, where Shay’s Rebellion occurred, there was great popular pressure for relief from debts in the midst of postwar economic stagnation. In particular, resort was had, in Rhode Island at least,to the creation of paper money, un-backed by gold or anything else, to give indebted residents something to service their debts. This precursor of Argentina-style, Weimar-style fiat money horrified most of the Framers and their fear of it influenced, in Klarman’s view, fundamental decisions about (1) the power of the Federal government, not just on the topic of currency but broadly and (2) the extent to which the organs of government should be aligned with / insulated from the popular will / mood.

Klarman then needs to distinguish this read of the Framers’ motivations from the Charles Beard perspective, which he does with modest effect, first by averting to scholarly criticism of the accuracy of many of the “facts” that Beard researched, but also by trying to convince the reader that the Framers’ rejection of paper money mechanism was not an aggregation of personal financial calculations, but a moral imperative, in the thinking of the era. It is worth noting that a number of the Framers wound up insolvent in ensuing decades, hoist to some extent by their own petard.

The reference in the book’s title to a “coup” is highly misleading insofar as the content and the author’s tone are implicated. Yes, of course, we know that the Framers were an elite and that their commission going into the convention did not entail scrapping the Articles of Confederation entirely and inventing a new governmental structure. And it’s been recognized for some time that the Constitution’s provisions for its own ratification sidestepped the Articles’ unanimous consent rule. But in no sense of the word is that a “coup” as the term is modernly understood, nor does that word remotely resemble the author’s perspective, which is very dry and non-argumentative. I guess the title was someone’s clumsy attempt to make prospective readers think that the book will give them a dramatic account of nefarious doings when, in fact, it’s as dry as a case summary for a law school class.

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Q. Publius
A Masterpiece that Will Become a Classic; First Comprehensive History of America's Founding Documents
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2017
Format: HardcoverAmazon Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )Verified Purchase
This book is a masterpiece and a must read for anyone seriously interested in American Constitutional government. In a BookTV interview the great historian Gordon Wood was once asked why Americans are so interested in the founding period and the Founders. He responded that it is a matter of knowing our identity as a nation. Unlike many countries, Americans do not have royalty who serve as figureheads for the nation. Our presidents and most of our political leaders are elected for a comparatively short time. Knowledge of the founding period gives us a sense of what it means to be an American by telling us what the first Americans considered citizenship to be. The author of this book, Michael Klarman, a professor of law, has done a great service by thoroughly researching the Articles of Confederation, Constitutional Convention, ratifying debates and conventions, and the Bill of Rights, and writing a book that it the first unified, in depth summary of these Constitutional moments. His research in the sources is deep. His summary of the main events and players is comprehensive and insightful. This book will be a classic in law schools and history classes for many years. Americans are constantly referring to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because it is the source of their freedoms down to the present day. This book tells how those rights originated and developed, and provides background for much disputed political opinions on what individual rights mean today. I've been reading on the founding period for decades, and yet I learned many new things from the author's comprehensive treatment. Key historical works on the founding such as those of Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, Jack Rakove, and Pauline Meyer, will still be necessary reading to understand this period. But Michael Klarman's new book is likely to become the one indispensable classic history of the period.

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Top reviews from other countries

Robert Goldin
Highly acclaimed account of how the Constitution was created.
Reviewed in Canada on January 24, 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Scholarly, meticulously researched history of the Constitution and the men who created it, Not for the leisurely reader. Exposes the hard realities of colonial America and how the 55 delegates tried to determine the future of the country. For serious historians, constitutional scholars.

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The Brother
Impressive excavation of the ruins of America's oligarchical constitution
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2020
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Reverence for the original intentions of the 'Founders' of the United States is a kind of religion, and the Supreme Court is now dominated by true believers in that faith. No-one who reads this book can take such an ideology seriously.

It's a massive, scholarly and careful reconstruction of what the mostly wealthy, entirely male, often slave-owning delegates to the convention that drafted the Constitution actually thought and what motivated them to produce such a crippled democracy. The Senate deliberately favours states with tiny populations and in which the Electoral College can negate the election of a President who wins the popular vote. The delegates allowed the slave-owning states to increase their congressional representation by counting their human property as three-fifths of a white person (needless to say, the slaves were granted absolutely no rights for themselves).

This elite of white men was animated above all by the desire to restrict what they saw as dangerously democratic ideas, especially in those states that were at the time trying to offer some form of relief to impoverished farmers. They were forced to pay their share in hard currency to satisfy the demands of financiers and speculators who had cornered the debts incurred in the war against the British. Madison and his co-thinkers were horrified by such subversive measures to help their poorer fellow citizens. Giving the small states two senators each - so that today's tiny population of Wyoming has the same representation as California's in the Senate - copper-fastens a conservative majority and is a permanent roadblock to democratic economic policies, let alone reform of the Constitution itself.

The USA is still saddled with this 18th century oligarchical view of how a republic should be run. The system desperately needs reform.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the most thorough history of our Constitution

5.0 out of 5 stars Was the Constitution the result of a coup?

4.0 out of 5 stars A valuable contribution to research, misleadingly titled

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece that Will Become a Classic; First Comprehensive History of America's Founding Documents

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly acclaimed account of how the Constitution was created.

4.0 out of 5 stars Impressive excavation of the ruins of America's oligarchical constitution

Probably the most thorough history of our Constitution

Was the Constitution the result of a coup?

A valuable contribution to research, misleadingly titled

A Masterpiece that Will Become a Classic; First Comprehensive History of America's Founding Documents

Highly acclaimed account of how the Constitution was created.

Impressive excavation of the ruins of America's oligarchical constitution