Democracy, Liberty and Property

Download or read book Democracy, Liberty and Property written by Merrill D. Peterson and published by MacMillan Publishing Company. This book was released on 1966 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Civil War, the history of American democracy was state-centered. Under the constitutional system as it then existed, the states had virtually exclusive jurisdiction over almost all matters of concern to the average citizen. State government and state policy were pretty much a reflection of state constitutional systems, and the state constitutions, in turn, were the product of state constitutional conventions. These constitutional conventions were held to frame a body of supreme and fundamental law that defined the government, including its powers and limitations. By the 1820's, time had brought transforming changes in society and new political ideas that demanded expression in fundamental law. New conventions that would liberalize the existing constitutional system were held in which statesmen of a new generation engaged in great debates on the sources and ends of government with the surviving giants of a dying age. They confronted each other on the most controversial issues of the age. The issues varied from state to state, but everywhere they were sharply contested and the debates were the most profound since the first conventions that ratified the Constitution of the United States. In this book, the author focuses on the three greatest conventions of the period, those of Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia. -- From Foreward.