American Revolution and the Constitution

Featuring original essays by Jack N. Rakove, Akhil Reed Amar, Adam J. White, Colleen A. Sheehan, and Harvey C. Mansfield.

The American Enterprise Institute offers a major
intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique
value of their national inheritance.

In the seventh volume of this series,
scholars of American history, law, and politics discuss how the American
Revolution unleashed the forces of constitution-making in the United States. As
states erected new governments in the wake of independence, they worked to
combine traditions of colonial self-government with both classical and novel
political theories.

Studying the revolutionary period shows how it gave birth to a constitutional culture that shaped the delegates and debates that would forge the nation's enduring Constitution in 1787.