The Founding Rules: Slavery and the Creation of American Constitutionalism, 1787-1889

FAIN: FT-286142-22

Aaron Hall
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-2009)

Research and writing leading to a book on the emergence and evolution of an authoritative Founding in American constitutional culture (1789-1870s).

This book project explores the rise of an authoritative constitutional Founding in American culture, law, and politics during the century after Ratification. It asks how, why and to what effect did the United States develop a constitutionalism enthralled and enclosed by its own origin story. Over ten chapters, The Founding Rules charts a transformation in constitutional ideas and practices. It traces how a divided public, a generation after 1789, turned to the constitutional past to govern their unstable present; it illustrates how this realm of ascribed constitutional history became a locus of power; and it explains how that authority faltered and fragmented around the Civil War only to rise again as a force against Reconstruction. Drawing from a rich and diverse array of archival material expressing constitutional culture, the book will tell readers how and why the Founding was invented, inculcated, reshaped and reaffirmed in the nineteenth century.