PART TWO - LESS CONVINCING FACTORS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
Summary
The Constitution was a revolution that replaced the friendship league of the confederation mode of government with a complete, tri-partite national government, able to raise its own revenue by tax directly, to operate without recourse to the states, and to enact laws supreme over the states. The Constitution replaced supremacy of the states with sovereignty of the people and ended the one-state veto of congressional actions necessary for the common defense or general welfare. It is the thesis of this book that the revolution was caused first by anger at the states for their betrayal of the sacred, united cause, and most urgently by the need to raise revenue for the national defense. Others have suggested that the motivating purpose of the Constitution was to allow Congress to regulate commerce, to suppress insurrection, to umpire territory disputes among the states, or to allow creditors who authored the Constitution to get paid. Those factors, however, upon inspection look peripheral, as explained in the next chapters.
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked StatesThe Meaning of the Founders' Constitution, pp. 187 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005